The Shadows and the Bat
by Idrial Hawke
Summary: Ra's al Ghul takes over the Shadows, leading to the crossing of paths between the world's greatest detective and Third Echelon's biggest badass.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

This is my city. I was born here, raised here, my parents were murdered here in cold blood by a common street thug who was just looking for someone to kill. From that day onward, I have dedicated my life to fighting crime in my home... Gotham City. After the death of my parents when I was ten, my butler, Alfred Pennyworth, took care of me and never argued or complained when I requested that we leave Gotham so that I could seek out the best places of learning, and over the next ten years, I trained my mind and my body, learning a wide range of subjects, but specializing in multiple forms of martial arts, forensics, criminal psychology, surveillence, and basically everything else that has allowed me to earn my reputation as the world's greatest detective. Really, though, it's the fact that my parents left me with a thriving group of businesses and considerable wealth to support my knack for invention, and I don't miss many clues. It's easy to be a great detective when you can pick up clues that the authorities have missed. Like right now, for example, I'm on the trail of a perp who, I believe, is involved with some type of international crime or terror syndicate. Because of the flourescent visor in my cowl, one of the several visors that I can summon with the touch of a button, I can track my target's footsteps through this alleyway as easy as if he had left his footprints in the mud. I can also tell from the markings on some of the footprints that the shoes are of foreign make. I can barely make out the stamp of a middle eastern brand on the print. Good thing there's so much dust in these alleys, the flourescent visor picks up disturbances in the dust and lets me follow a trail in lightly travelled areas or if something has been moved on a shelf.

I follow the trail around a couple of corners and up a fire escape. Now, my prey is beginning to step into my territory. Noone spends more time on the rooftops of Gotham than I do. I shoot my grapnel and ride it up to the roof of the building, taking care to check the top of the fire escape to make sure I can pick up the trail. I follow the trail to the pinnacle of the building, and it suddenly stops, he must have hitched a ride. Now I know that this was all planned beforehand. The Gotham City PD have finally shown up at the scene of the crime, an explosion at a guns and ammo shop that I had been keeping an eye on because of suspicions that it may be a front for some organized crime syndicate. I haven't seen any of the usual suspects, but the actions are the same. Unfortunately, my other life as Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises- though all of the work is done by Lucius Fox- philanthropist and playboy, got in the way. When the shop exploded, I was just pulling into the alley where I've been hiding the batmobile, so I wasn't able to see anyone near there at the time of the explosion. I figure I need to assume that the explosive was either detonated remotely, or on a timer, so I decide on a five-minute fuse. It's been approximately five minutes since the explosion, so a helicopter would have a hard time getting more than twenty miles or so in ten minutes from a stop. Of course, as always, I have an ace up my sleeve, so I call her.

"Oracle, it's me. Find my GPS coordinates, there should be something showing up on radar flying relatively directly away from my position that would not be a commercial airliner... most likely a helicopter."

"Hey, Bruce. Are you investigating that explosion at the gun shop downtown?"

"Yes."

"I'm not seeing anything showing up on radar, but one of the weather sensors on a roof in your area did pick up some wind sheer about ten minutes ago that could possibly have been a helicopter. Possibly one that is invisible to radar. Be careful if you go after it. It may be EMP shielded as well. What were you able to find at the scene?"

"Residue that suggests that it was a semtex-type explosive. I followed a trail that ran from the scene to this rooftop and abruptly ends here. There were dead bodies left behind, killed by gunshot wounds."

"Covering his tracks, great. When your ride shows up, try going south-southwest. That's the direction that the sensor is from you."

"I'm on my way. Thanks. By the way, check any chatter you can find and see if there is any talk of foreign crime syndicates or terror groups running operations here in Gotham, and see who the listed owner is for the shop."

"You mean you got a visual of the perp?"

"No, but his shoe prints showed foreign manufacture... a middle-eastern shoe company."

"You're amazing, Bruce."

"So are you."

I was already in the Batwing, heading in the direction specified by Oracle, aka Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl. It's ironic, really. As Batgirl, she was a sidekick. I trained her as I had, and still did, Robin. She had proved useful more than once, which is why I agreed to train her, but she also proved to be a liability on occasion. Then, the worst happened, Joker shot her and the bullet pierced her spine. She survived, of course, but was permanently confined to a wheelchair. However, instead of letting her lack of bipedal locomotion leave her moaning in perpetual depression, she found a new hobby. She learned the art of computer hacking and excelled at it to the point that she is now likely the best hacker in the world, or at least on par with the best that the NSA can muster. She's built herself a massive computer network in the Gotham clock tower with over ten terabytes of data already stored in her massive databases, plus she has almost perfect total recall of anything that she's ever seen. She's more valueable to me now than ever.

My aircraft is pretty fast, so I catch up with the helicopter twenty-five miles away from where my footprint trail ended, even flying zig-zag to cover more area. I want to see where it's going, so I ascend into the clouds of the night sky, hoping that they didn't see me. The Batwing is invisible to radar and EMP shielded, so I don't think that they could have spotted me or, if they did, they can't really do anything about it unless they have heat-seekers equipped on that thing, and I have countermeasures to deal with those. It's an attack helicopter based off of a Russian design. How did it get here? I scan it and send the scan to Oracle.

"Oracle, I need anything you can give me on the scan I just sent you. The getaway helicopter is an attack model based off of a Russian Hind or Black Shark."

"Someone is flying a Russian prototype attack helicopter over US airspace?"

"I can only assume that it was smuggled piecemeal into the country and assembled here."

"Give me a few minutes to see what I can dig up on unusual cargo that may fit the description. As for the chopper, it's a prototype Ka-55. Stealthed, EMP shielded, and carries a payload of eight missiles and has two twenty-millimeter machine guns, not to mention any other modifications that were done aside from the standard design. The missiles can be either Air-to-Air or Air-to-Surface, so be careful."

"Always. Thanks for the info. Keep me posted on what else you find."

I conitnue to track the heli south. Where is it headed? I bring up my map overlay for the radar. Looks like we're making a relative beeline for Boston. As I'm staring at the radar, I see three bogeys incoming. USAF F-22 Raptors coming up fast. I stay in the cover of the thickest clouds I can find and hang back. Someone must have spotted them.

"Oracle, did you call in the cavalry?"

"No, but I'm picking up some NSA chatter through encrypted channels. One of their agents must have spotted it somehow, or knew when it was coming and where from."

"You hacked the NSA comms? I'm glad you're on MY side."

"I had broken their encryption on the comms a while back, so I keep a listening device available to tune into their frequency for just such times as these. When I got your pic of the heli, I figured it might come in handy, so I fired it up."

I switch the craft's readout to thermal to watch the show. They probably saw the fighter jets coming about the same time I did, so they are prepared for the approach, if there's anything that they can do against fighter jets. I see the heli bank slightly to align itsself, and the door opens just for a moment while some type of discharge comes from what I believe is some type of rocket launcher. There's no way that I can react fast enough to try to shoot the rocket out of the air, even if I had anything to shoot it with. I've always basically used this craft mainly only for transportation and surveillance, so there was never a need to put weapons on it. Only one shot from the bad guys, but it was before the fighters ever spotted them. The Raptors are able to get off a volley of missiles before the projectile from the Ka-55 explodes, then I'm able to see what it is. An EMP blast goes off around the jets, paralyzing them. I'm EMP shielded and so is the heli, but the jets are going down, and modern fighter jets are equipped with electronic ejector seats, so those pilots are stuck. Meanwhile, the heli dives, leaving behind some countermeasures at the top of the dive, going far enough to escape the damage. This guy is good. The jets are going down, it's time to come out of hiding. I have two tow cables, so I shoot them at the furthest two from me and then fly underneath the remaining one, then begins the balancing act as I lower one jet piggy-back style while towing the other two. The best I can do is to get them into the water. No way I'm landing all three of these birds safely over land. I let them down to just over five feet from the surface of the water, about a tenth of a mile offshore and push a button on my console, causing a small barrell-type object to protrude from the back of the Batwing. My targeting system targets the two fighters on the tow cables and fires. One. Two. The towed Raptors are hit with a bouyant putty invented by Wayne Enterprises that I have co-opted for my own use. It has multiple uses, I can incapacitate a fleeing perp with it and make sure they stay put while the authorities get to them. I can also use it to keep someone, or something, afloat. I hit the release on the cables as soon as the goop hits, then let the one riding piggy-back slide off and hit it with the putty as it falls to the water. I then shoot a flare into the air to alert rescuers to the downed fighters position.

"Oracle, 3 disabled American fighter jets in my current position floating in the water. Let the Coast Guard know. Pilots are safe."

"Done. What took them down?"

"Rocket launcher equipped with EMP payload. My shielding held. First time I've ever had to use it."

Well, that went well, but I believe that my targets in the heli know I'm here now and they know that I was following them, so they may have taken other precautions. The best I can do is try to catch up with them again and hope that they don't have an easily reachable hiding place.

Five minutes later, I spot them again. I think the blackness of night may have worked to my advantage, not allowing anyone inside the chopper to see me going to the jets' rescue. I stay back away from them for a while longer until we start getting close to Boston, then the heli begins to decend. They find the building that they were looking for and the Ka-55 Black Shark prototype Russian-made attack helicopter comes to rest atop a building in one of the largest cities in the USA.

I stay calm. I can't afford to give myself away now, not before I'm able to plant a bug on to the building. I wait until everyone is out of the heli and inside and I decend to line up a shot close to a window. The bugs that I use have been augmented with Wi-Fi capability so that Oracle can hack into their emails as they're being sent. I find a window close to a phone line so that it can pick up phone conversations as well and fire away. I alert Oracle that it's live and tap into it myself to make sure that It's working before I go back to Gotham. I take note of the address of the building and send that to Oracle as well.

"Oracle, I'm sending you another address. This is the building where the bird landed. See if you can find out who owns it. Also, I checked the bug and it's broadcasting. I'm on my way back to Gotham."

"Ok, Bruce. I'm hacking the email server now. Also, I have a name for the gun shop, it's Kane Degand. I ran the name through some of my databases, and got a hit. He was a known henchman in the Ventriloquist's gang, and the Ventriloquist, as you know, is one of the inmates that was broken out of Arkham last week."

"Ah, yet another piece of the puzzle."

"Yes, and guess who was ID'ed just this evening by one of the thugs who was apprehended yesterday from the breakout."

"You have piqued my interest."

"Talia al Ghul."

"So Ra's is tied up in all of this somewhere. She broke them out?"

"Yes. Maybe less tied up, more holding the strings."

"Good point. It's very possible that this is all his doing and the bombing tonight was just to cover up some evidence, and maybe also a way of cutting Scarface out of the operation."

"Let me guess, you're going to go pay a certain wooden mob boss a visit when you get back into Gotham."

"Exactly. Batman out."

"Good hunting."

Just under an hour later, I'm back in Gotham City. I make the rounds to some places that I know that Scarface's gang has holed up in the past. The third building I try is an old closed down department store building and I see movement on the inside. I have the Batwing drop me off and hit the button for the Batmobile to come this way. I enter the building through a window in the upper floor and slip into the shadows. I move around to the stairway near the rear of the building and sneak down, paying close attention to any noises coming around the corner. I reach the bottom floor and look around. I see the Ventriloquist holding the puppet known as Scarface, fashioned of wood from the old gallows of Blackgate prison. Those gallows were the site of 313 separate excecutions, and some people believe that the souls of the criminals who died there are all contained in the wood and that Scarface is a gestalt entity who is able to control whoever holds him. I hear him barking orders at some of his thugs.

"We need to get noding. If we don't get gack here gy fide in the norning, we'll ge to late to get it done at all without getting gagged gy the coks."

I didn't say the Ventriloquist was any good at BEING a ventriloquist, he has trouble with the letters b, m, p, and v. I move around the perimeter of the room, quietly incapacitating a handful of his goons before making my way toward my marks. I toss some exploding pellets of knockout gas toward the last of his goons and grab Scarface and the Ventriloquist, taking them outside and up to the top of the building.

"Talk! You were working with Ra's al Ghul on something, weren't you?"

"We thought the noney was good, gut he duggle-crossed us this edening."

"What's he planning?"

"I don't know!"

The best thing about interrogating someone made of wood is that all it takes is a little bit of fire to get them to open up.

"Talk or toast!"

"We don't know, gut it's got sonething to do with an international terrorist grout called the shadows."

I've heard of them. They were making a lot of noise a few years ago.

"What was your part in this?"

"He was using the gunshot as storage for sone tackages. He also ordered sone sentex and C4. Tonight he ticked up a gox of twenty nillineter annunition and LAW rocket nodified ENT grenades and glew ut the tlace."

I leave them hanging from a light on the roof of the building.

"Oracle, I'm coming up. I need everything you've got on the Shadows terrorist organization."

"It'll be ready when you get here."

"Thanks. Batman out."

This has a chance to be the biggest, most dangerous terror plot that Ra's has ever hatched. The Shadows are a relatively new player on the terror scene, but they have been very active over the last few years. I'm not going to let anything happen to Gotham. I have sworn to protect this city and its people. I am the Batman, and this is my city.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

My name is Sam Fisher. I am a splinter cell for the US government, although they will deny that I ever existed if I'm ever caught. I work for Third Echelon, a division of the NSA that doesn't officially exist. No surprise there, some people joke that the initials in NSA stand for "No Such Agency." That being said, the fewer people who know my name, or that I even exist, the easier it is to say that I have done my job. For the last few weeks I have been tracking down links to a seemingly resurrected Shadows terrorist organisation. This isn't the first time it's seemingly risen up like a phoenix from the dead. I've been personally responsible for destroying the organisation on more than one occasion, and I guess I'll just have to do it again. I am currently on the trail of a Russian-made prototype attack helicopter and was able to find information that it was in route from Gotham City to Boston, so I called in an air strike on the chopper. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to find on radar since it's a prototype model Ka-55 Black Shark. The Ka-50 is the newest attack helicopter in production in the Russian chopper fleet, in effect replacing the Hind. The Ka-55 prototype isn't much of a step up from the Ka-50, but the difference is that the Ka-55 is stealthed and EMP shielded. Hopefully, they don't have any other tricks up their sleeves.

"Fisher, come in."

It's my boss, Lambert, buzzing in on a receiver implanted just behind my ear, so noone else is able to hear when he speaks to me. I have a mic implant in my throat so that I can reply back in a whisper and still be heard clearly.

"Here."

"The Raptors that were sent after the Black Shark were hit with an EMP. Fortunately, the pilots are safe. They seem to have been saved by a mysterious UFO."

"Evidently there is another player in this. So the heli was equipped with an EMP?"

"It was fired from the cockpit by some type of rocket launcher."

"So the Ka-55 made it to Boston, then."

"Unless our mysterious benefactor shot it down, but there's no reports of explosions in the sky."

"I don't have any info on an address in Boston, so I'm going to have to pick up the trail in Gotham, unfortunately, the building that I was going to investigate tonight just blew up a few hours ago."

"Well, I have some good news there. We have info on the owner of that building, and he's a known henchman of a Gotham-based mobster called the Ventriloquist. We have some addresses of other buildings owned by him and his cartel. I'm uploading them to your opsat now."

"I'll get started on it now."

I begin to go to the addresses listed on my opsat for the Ventriloquist's cartel. One of the places on the list looks like it's an old abandoned department store. As I case the building, I see some signs of life, good. The other four buildings that I had tried had been empty. I go through the loading dock at the back of the building slinking quietly through the shadows. I had expected to see sentries at the doors, but so far, nothing. I arrive at the door from the docks to the building proper and slide my optic cable through the crack beneath the door to look around. The video from the optic displays on my opsat, which is a digital device not much larger than a digital watch that holds all kinds of technological goodies. I can use it to send and receive messages, take and send pictures, and use it for a viewscreen for my optic cable and my diversion or sticky camera. I can now see that there are again no sentries at the door. Again, strange. Just to make sure, I hook up the laser mic to my Five-seveN and point it at the door. The light is red, so there is no sound. Good. I open the door and slip through quickly but quietly, and proceed into the building. From the looks of things, someone has already been here and done a bit of damage.

After I've worked my way in a little bit, I begin to see some of the thugs being woken up by their comrades. I pick one corner of the room and bring the SC2k off of my shoulder, fitting it with a diversion camera, take aim about fifteen degrees over the top of their heads and fire. I then bring the diversion camera feed up on my opsat and, checking the video to make sure all of the targets are in range, I hit the button for the CS gas. They're all out like a light in seconds, before the last one falls, I pop off a couple of shots with my Five-seveN, taking out the ones in another corner of the room. That leaves only three in sight. One shock grenade ought to do it. Seconds later, I'm shuffling up the stairs to see what I can find up there. I'm going for the leader.

There are only a couple of goons on the upper floor, but no sign yet of a leader. I keep hearing a reference to "bats." I shake my head and move along the shadows into position. There are only three of them here, so I pistol whip the one closest to me, then shoot the one on the right while kicking at the guy on the left. That last one dodged my kick, but I sort of expected it. I'm already coming forward, so I punch at him with my gun hand and clock him in the temple. He's down, so I check on the other two. The one I had shot took the bullet through the neck, so I don't think he's going to be a problem. I stomp on the back of the neck of the first one just for good measure, he doesn't even grunt, so I think I'm safe. I decide to take a look on the roof, so I head to a window. I want to avoid the door if I can.

I pull myself up to the roof with the help of my "cigar" named for its shape, it's actually a grappling hook with retractable claws. I slip over the edge onto the rooftop and see a peculiar sight. a man holding a puppet being helped down from a hook next to the roof access door. I snap a pic with my opsat and send it to HQ asking them to give me info on him. The thugs are giving him deferential treatment as if he's the leader.

"Sam, this is Grim." Anna Grimsdottir, the woman who usually serves as my handler when needed. She couldn't have had time to run the photo through the ID system yet.

"That was fast. I'm here."

"I aim to please. He's called the Ventriloquist. I had heard of him before. He's one of the mobster-types in Gotham. He was responsible for a large crimewave when I was living in Jersey until he was finally taken down by a local vigilante."

"I'm getting the feeling that there was someone here shortly before I was. Who's the vigilante?"

"He's called the Batman."

"I thought he was just a myth."

"The mystery benefactor from earlier had all of his calling cards."

"I did hear some of the goons talking about bats earlier, but I thought they were talking about the furry kind with wings."

"Keep the link open while you interrogate him, and don't underestimate the puppet." I begin to move forward as she's saying this.

"I was planning to."

As I begin to come out of the shadows, I pop off headshots on the two goons with my Five-seveN. I knock the puppet out of his hand and ram the Ventriloquist's head through the roof access door.

"Where was the Black Shark helicopter going?"

"What helicopter? The guy who blew up the gunshop was on foot!" Seems like he's telling the truth.

"Who did the guy who blew up your gunshop work for?"

"Technically, it wasn't MY shop, it was one of the boss' associates, but the man you're looking for is Ra's al Ghul." Boss?

"Who's your boss?"

"Scarface." He says as he points to the dummy. This guy is kuckoo. I don't have time for games.

"What do you mean by 'the man I'm looking for'?"

"Boss already told Batman, Ra's is in cahoots with the Shadows. Maybe even running the show." As he says this, I hear sirens from police cars pulling up below, so I hang him back on the hook that he had been on, then I throw the dummy over the ledge to the street below. It sounds like it hits one of the cars, good. I slip off into the shadows and let the authorities do their jobs.

"Grim, cross-reference owner records of all buildings in Boston with all known accomplices of Ra's al Ghul."

"Already on it Sam. Go ahead and start heading to Boston and I'll forward the info to your opsat as soon as it's available. I'll also, just in case there are multiple hits, make a special annotation for any buildings that are able to accomodate a chopper landing pad."

"Good. I'm on my way."


	3. Chapter 3

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**Chapter 3**

"Bruce, it sounds like someone came in behind you and cleaned house on Scarface's gang. Most of his men are dead. It was done with surgical precision, so whoever it was is a pro."

"Probably the NSA agent who called the fighters in after the prototype Black Shark."

"Even your standard NSA agents aren't that good. Either there was a squad or this guy was one of the cream of the crop."

"I'll leave that possibility open, then."

"Dad says Ventriloquist is still alive and is claiming that you did it all."

"He doesn't know I have an alibi."

"Dad knows your gadgets, the ones found at the scene were different. You don't need me for an alibi. How soon before you go to Boston?"

"As soon as I look through the info you pulled up for me. If Ra's is in on this, I need to get on it fast. Have you picked up anything interesting from the email bug?"

"Nothing incriminating, but I have intercepted some emails to and from Talia al Ghul."

"Anything hinting of travel plans?"

"No destinations yet. Although, there are some hints that she is going somewhere."

"Keep looking. Eventually, a destination will pop up."

"By the way, the heli's not there anymore. I rewound the vid and they lowered it down into a hangar. Now there are no signs of a landing pad. Also, the listed owner of the building is al Ghul's assistant, Abu."

We talk intermittently as I pour over the write-ups she gave me on the Shadows. Most of the info is a few years old. going back to when it was being ran by an undercover terrorist named Nasir Tarighian posing as a philanthropist under the assumed name of Namik Basaran. I actually met the guy once, as Bruce Wayne, at a charity event. He had me fooled too.

Ra's al Ghul is one of my most dangerous, if not THE most dangerous, foes. He has lived many lifetimes because of his mastery of a certain type of pool, which he calls a Lazarus Pit, that rejuvenates him any time he needs to visit the "fountain of youth." It has also revived him and healed his body of serious injuries. Fortunately, he keeps the locations of those pits a closely-guarded secret. I would shudder to think of what would happed if the Joker found one. I believe that so many deaths, so many times being brought back to life, so many visits to the Lazarus Pits would have a deteriorating effect on a perfectly sane person, so Ra's is mad to say the least. However, he has lived for so long that he may be the wisest insane lunatic in the history of the world. The other thing about him that makes him dangerous is his daughter, Talia. She is beautiful, but I try not to think about her in that way when we meet, because she is usually working for her father. The problem is, sometimes, she seems to be on my side. Sometimes, she only acts like she is on my side to lure me into a trap, and sometimes, she is my only way out. I think that she has a thing for me... Usually, when she does help me out, it is because without her help, I would have died. The one time that I actually went into a Lazarus Pit, she was the one who did it after Ra's had gotten the better of me. All of a sudden, I'm back in the land of the living, and it drove me crazy for a time. Fortunately, Talia calmed me down and brought me back to myself. There you have it. Ra's al Ghul is the only one of my foes who has ever actually killed me. It just didn't take. He is also the only one of my foes that knows my alter ego as Bruce Wayne. He has also found my Batcave. The Joker is wild and unpredictable and would kill someone as easily as looking at them. He wouldn't think twice about killing anyone and everyone in Gotham City just to prove that he could. He was responsible for the crippling of Barbara Gordon, and the "killing" of Jason Todd (who actually had escaped by the skin of his teeth and, once he finally recovered, assumed the identity of "The Red Hood" and attempted to take over the Gotham underworld), who was my second Robin. Ra's, on the other hand, has lived at the very least half a dozen lifetimes and knows all of my secrets. On top of all of that, he would gladly bring about the deaths of the vast majority of the human race in a mass genocide in order to accomplish his vision of returning the world to its "glory days" of the dawn of man. Now for the clincher: of all of the villains that have ever crossed my path, he is the only one that I have never been able to put away. He's died a few times, though he always comes back, but I have never been able to hand him over to the authorities, so he's never seen the inside of a jail cell. All of that taken together means that he is more dangerous than any other human being in the world.

By the time I finished looking over all of the info, it was past two in the morning, I'll still have a little time to look around, but I can't get too involved. I'll only have about two hours until I lose the cover of darkness, then the busy business day will begin and I'll be stuck for the day. I need to get down there and poke around, then get out before sunrise. I program the Batmobile to go back to the Batcave while signalling for the Batwing, which I sent back to the Batcave for Alfred to refuel as soon as I entered the clock tower. Within minutes, I am in trasit, and within an hour, I'm back in Boston. I click the IR goggles down on the visor in my cowl to check the windows on the upper floor. No security on the windows this high up, so I cut a hole in the window to let myself in. To cover my tracks, I have invented a device to replace the glass in the hole using the same type of resin and the same idea that they use to fix a chipped windshield on a car. I keep the goggles down to let me be aware of any security lasers that may be in my way and make my way to the staircase. One level up is the hangar, windowless. The Black Shark is the only vehicle in here. I apply a homing device to the area under the propellers as close to the turbine that turns the propellers as possible. Hopefully, they won't look up there, and they won't be able to detect it due to the fact that it doesn't activate until there is a significant change in barometric pressure, such as if it were to take off or change altitude.

I head back down stairs to find an office. The first office I come to actually has Abu's name on the door. That makes it easy. I pick the lock and, very carefully, open the door. I scan the room thoroughly. It would be just like Ra's to set a trap for me here. If he were expecting me, and I have every reason (experience being one) to believe that he is, he knows that I know Abu is one of his most trusted associates. Actually, I think he trusts Abu more than he trusts Talia. So for Abu's name to be engraved in a sign on the door, this has got to be the office, above all others, that he has prepared for my visit. I keep my IR goggles active with one hand on my gas mask and the other on the doorknob. My IR goggles are low-profile, so the display automatically filters out any of the standard red tint of an ordinary Infra-Red visual device. This way, the rest of my vision isn't obstructed or impeded by everything appearing red. I can even read documents with the IR active. The door opens inward, so I'm halfway expecting to trip a security beam with the door before I even get the chance to see inside, but fortunately, that doesn't happen. As the opening door reveals the room within, I begin to map out in my mind which way to dive if anything comes at me. Before I leave the doorway, I inspect the doorframe to see if there seem to be any hidden locking mechanisms. Satisfied, I fully enter the room, but not before I jam some explosive putty into the doorjamb just in case I suddenly get locked in and need to make a quick exit. Crouching in case I need to make sudden movements, I slink into the room. I bug the phone first, then stick a USB device into the computer that allows Oracle remote access. I give her a head's up that it's on, and begin to look through the desk drawers. I grab a pen light out of my utility belt and hold it in my mouth as I begin my search. First the right side of the desk, then I step over to the left side. That's when it happens. "It" being a piture on the desk suddenly morphing into Ra's, talking to me.

"Well met, detective. I knew that you would come, and I knew that you would try to snoop around this office. I also knew that you would be on your guard, suspecting laser grids or some other defence system. That is why I installed a pressure plate in front of the desk before I recarpeted."

A pressure plate. As usual with Ra's, it's the one thing that I didn't suspect that gets me.

"I can't have you ruining my plans detective. As much as I hate to do this, you leave me no choice. I must kill you."

The door begins to close and the room starts filling up with toxic gas. There's two things I was prepared for. I duck behind the desk, throw on my gas mask, and hit the detonator on the explosive putty.

"You will forgive me for failing to divulge my plans to you before you die, but-" BOOM!

I run out of the room, back up the stairs and onto the roof, where I summon the Batwing for the flight back to Gotham.

"Barbara, as soon as you get whatever you can off of that terminal, detonate the stick. I had to make a sudden exit."

It's daybreak before I get into Boston, so I get a hotel room close to the building that I will be infiltrating tonight. Lucky for me, our resident hacking expert, Carly St. John, had our eye-in-the-sky in position over Boston last night in time for it to capture the landing of the Black Shark prototype. She also added quite a bit of info to the dossier that Grim downloaded to my opsat. I go to sleep as soon as I get into the room, setting my opsat to wake me at five o'clock. At five, I awake and call room service for a nice hot meal. Then I begin to go over the info from my opsat.

Ra's al Ghul. Name means "the demon's head." He has died more often than the hopes and dreams of Chicago Cubs fans according to the dossier and always seems to come back from the grave. There are documented instances of him tangling with the ancient Knights Templar. There is a painting of him that has been carbon-dated to the 1600's that looks just like the picture that one of our agents sent to Third Echelon only two years ago, just before that agent's death. The oddest thing about that is that he looks younger in the picture than in the painting. The painting was unearthed by Carly, as was this: A reference to al Ghul during the founder of Islam Mohammed's seige of Jerusalem. Evidently, Ra's was playing both sides against the middle in that conflict in the hopes that they would wipe each other out. It didn't quite work. Mohammed's army ransacked the city, killing most of the population including women and children. The most recent activity recorded in the file is his "Society of the Lotus" he ran a few years ago. It may have had benign beginnings before he assumed control of the cult, however, it was classified as a terrorist organisation when they tried to sink Monaco into the Mediterranean last year. From his psyche file, such as there is on him since noone has ever apprehended him, he is a nihilist. Basically an environmental terrorist who thinks that the human race needs to be wiped from the face of the earth. He was hatching some kind of plot that would have wiped out ninety-five percent of the world's population two years ago when that agent of ours was killed. I can only assume that either the agent died in the act of sabotaging the plot, or maybe Batman stepped in and cleaned up what our agent could not. The dossier does mention Batman a few times, but as dossiers go, his is relatively bare. His only listed known associates are his daughter, Talia al Ghul, and his servant, Abu. Talia is a looker, definately. Abu, on the other hand, is the name that the building that I'm staking out is registered to. He probably only needs the top couple of floors, so the rest of the fifty-something floors in the high-rise are rented out to other corporations and such. In other words, he not only needed a landing pad, but also some money to fund his next attempt to kill all people in the world. The good news is he's only owned it for three months and it will probably take a year to turn a profit on the building. If we wait until then, though, it will be too late.

"Sam, you awake yet?" It was Grimsdottir.

"Yeah, I've been awake for about twenty minutes going over this dossier."

"Well, you know how I said that Carly had our eye-in-the-sky on the building where the chopper landed last night?"

"M-hmm."

"Well, it also picked up the Batman's aircraft, which seemed to shoot a couple of projectiles of some sort at the building shortly after it landed, then took off. We began to pick up a signal from the building shortly thereafter that had not been broadcasting before. Carly has been at work decoding the encryption on them for the better part of the day and has finally hacked it."

"It must have had some good encryption for her to take this long."

"More encryption than is on our link to your opsat."

"So Batman could be hacking the opsat?"

"He would need to latch onto the signal first, but he could once he had, yes. The main thing is that our conversations on your implant are probably already being listened to."

"Nothing new. The Mark-one was completely unencrypted anyway. Treat this as such."

"Already done Sam. Anything sensative will be transmitted to you via opsat. Link will only be active intermittantly to avoid snooping."

"Gotcha."

"Also, Batman came back later, early this morning before sunrise and was inside the building for about a half an hour, then came running back out. He may be back tonight, so be on the lookout."

"Hmmm."

"You're official and he's vigilante, so you can handle this any way you wish, Sam.

"I'm official, but this is still a deniable op just like all the rest, so there's not really any difference. He knows alot more about the target than I do, and I can use all the help I can get, so I'll play nice if he does."

"Noted. When were you planning on going in?"

"Late. Eleven or after. This IS Boston, you know. Is there a dossier for the daughter, Talia?"

"No. There is absolutely nothing on her other than her involvement with her father's activities. Also, before you ask, there is no dossier on Abu, either."

"What about the Batman?"

"Sending now. Most of what we know comes from the criminals that he is responsible for delivering to the authorities."

"How about schematics on the building? Do we have anything: floorplan, security systems, cameras?"

"I'll see what we have and send you the details, Sam."

"Looks like I've got time to spare. Fisher out."

"Happy hunting."

If the implant is being bugged, even if it's a good guy, I don't want anyone to know what I'm about to do. Grim already knows, and I get a short message from her on my opsat to tell Sarah that she said hello. I use my phone to call my daughter, Sarah. I stay away from her too much, but our relationship has been really good over the last couple of years, and she knows that I don't like being away so much. That's why we try to spend extra time together when I can make it home, and when I have to be away, I try to call her whenever I can. I have plenty of spare time this evening, so it's perfect.

I talk with my daughter for about a half an hour, then I glance through the dossier on Batman and study the schematics of the building that I will be infiltrating tonight. When the time comes, I'm more than ready.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

At eleven o'clock I am walking around to the back of the building through an alleyway so as not to attract attention. When I get completely out of sight, I stuff my casual clothing that I had worn around town to blend in into my osprey, a low-profile backpack that holds more or less anything and everything that I ever use on these missions. The rear of the building has a smoker's patio, where smokers could come to get their nicotiene fix before Boston instituted a complete ban on all public smoking within city limits. That will be my entry point. I climb over the fencing and go up to the door. I hook a cable to my opsat that is attached at the other end to a device that will be able to transmit the correct code to the door. After a few seconds of waiting looking at numbers scroll down the screen of my opsat in a blur, the screen blinks and the light on the security lock turns from red to green and I hear the lock disengage, so I pull the door open and slip inside.

I make my way up the stairs to the top floors. I decide to pace myself. With fifty-eight floors in this building, I would completely wear myself out trying to run up that many flights of stairs, but the elevators are under video surveillience. Fortunately, I have plenty of time. I decide to go all the way up and see where that leads me. I'm in great shape, but still, by the time I reach the top of the stairs, my legs are on fire thanks to all of the folic acid that builds up in muscles that are put to extended use. I decide to sit on the top step for a minute and beat on my thighs to help the circulation get back into my muscles, then I stand back up and do some stretching excercises, then sit back down and stretch my quad and calf muscles for a minute before getting back up and heading for the door on the fifty-sixth floor. Why does this staircase not go all the way up? I guess I'll figure that part out shortly.

Before openning the door, I take a sip from the straw attached to the tube in the collar of my stealth suit. Officially, it's called an "Objective Force Warrior" uniform. It holds enough water to last for 12 hours if used sparingly. Since I knew that I would be climbing an inordinate amount of stairs, I had been drinking alot of water over the previous twenty-four hour period, plus, I filled my suit up just before departing my hotel room. I had sipped some during the long trudge up the stairs, and I just drank a good bit of it now. I know I'm not being very judicious with the water, but I also don't want to cramp up due to lack of fluids. I'll just have to fill up sooner.

I finally open the door and look around. I'm in a corridor looking at doors to offices, one of which is showing some recent damage. It seems that the door to the office of al Ghul's assistant has been hit with an explosive charge of some kind. That's probably Batman's handiwork from early this morning. I check the time on my opsat. It's not quite midnight yet, so I'm still correct to say THIS morning. I would assume that anything that was of importance would have been moved to a different office, so I continue on down the corridor. After passing a few more offices, I come to another flight of stairs. This must go up to the roof. I quickly check the rest of the doors on this floor. A few more offices, one restroom for each gender, and a conference room. I go up the stairs first, that's where I find the Black Shark. I need an opinion.

"Lambert. I've found the prototype Russian heli. Do you want me to nuke it?"

"Fisher. It's good to hear from you. I want to follow this back to Ra's al Ghul, so let's see where they go with it next."

"Only problem with that tactic is that they just might get there and be gone by the time I can arrive by conventional transportation."

"I've already thought of that, which is why I've made arrangements for the military to reserve a pilot and an F-16 at Hanscom Air Force Base for your use. As soon as we know a destination, he'll take you wherever you need."

"Good. So now I plant a beacon and we sit and wait."

"Exactly. Have you uncovered any interesting info from the offices?"

"Not yet. I was going to go back down as soon as I was clear on what we're doing with the Ka-55."

"Let me know if you find anything. Carly has been hacking into the bugs that Batman left and is also trying to hack into the network. She's got the phone feed live, but there's no activity at the moment."

"Well, she should be able to sleep on that until the morning, as long as she keeps an eye and some fingers awake to break the code on the other bugs."

"I'll let her know that you're looking out for her, Fisher. Lambert out."

I head back downstairs after putting the beacon on the chopper just to the inside of the gun turret so that it's out of the way of prying eyes. It should be good for seventy-two hours. After that, I'll just have to replace it if the heli is still here. I here one of the military contractors are working on a prototype that can go dormant until there is a change in air pressure. I hope I get one of those once they go into production. I bring up the schematics and security info that I had on my opsat. I go back to the door that I noticed before with the damage. According to the contractor, there was a pressure plate installed in this room linked to a locking mechanism in the door and a gas dispersal mechanism in the vents. The mechanism can be deactivated by turning the lights on and pressing a button on the bottom of the desk. The explosive that blew the door was obviously Batman's emergency escape plan. I decide to search elsewhere. I plug my opsat in to the USB drive of each of the computers in each of the offices as I come to them and allow the contents to be copied and transmitted to Third Echelon as I look through the paperwork in those offices. I use the trident goggles on the flourescent setting to search for hidden safes and such, because there is nothing listed on the schematics.

I find nothing. Evidently all of the secrets, except for the Russian prototype heli, are kept off-site. All that I am finding are legit business records. It seems like I'll have to wait until the heli moves to get to the good stuff on this mission, unless HQ is able to find something in all of the computer files that I'm sending them. I bug the offices and the conference room, and then walk into the men's restroom, peel out of my suit enough so that I can refill my water reserves, and climb into the vent above the toilets. These vents are just big enough so that I should be able to get some more rest without having to leave and come back, but I wan't to get away from the restrooms. Nothing like smelling refuse throughout your nap to have you feel like crap when you awaken. I get turned around at an intersection so that I can put the vent cover back in place and cover my tracks, then crawl over to the vents above the conference room and set my opsat to wake me at 6AM.

"Oracle, anything interesting on the bugs?"

"Hey Batman. No, but I did pick up some conversation about you earlier on the NSA link. They've got it figured that I've hacked their comms, but their old comms weren't secured at all, so their treating it as nothing new. The big news is that the agent, named Sam, has decided to play nice as long as you do. He needs your knowledge of Ra's and Talia. They've also hacked the phone bug, so we've got help listening to all of this dead air right now."

"Yeah, a lot of good those bugs are doing us right now. I'm going to hit the building once more tonight, and look through the other offices and take a closer look at the Black Shark. I've got a feeling that if there wasn't anything in that desk or on the computer last night, there probably isn't anything in any of the other offices, and even if so, all incriminating evidence has probably been moved to another location. I want to get a closer look at the chopper though, I think there might be something there that I can do something with. Any idea whether Sam is just a generic or were they mentioning other agents?" Our intelligence community has, in the past, been notorious for sending dozens of spies and agents out under the same alias. Once, during the Cold War, there was a mass execution of all people named John Brown all throughout Europe and Asia carried out by Soviet intelligence on Halloween night. It became known in the intelligence community as "Black Halloween." It would be just like our government to keep doing something that has been a spectacular failure in the past.

"No, his last name is Fisher. I have heard him talking to a man named Lambert that seems to be his superior, and a woman who I haven't heard the name of yet, but both reference another woman named Carly, who is working on hacking our comms." So that's why she greeted me at Batman instead of Bruce.

"Send them an encrypted message, rerouted off of multiple servers and sattelites telling them that the invitation to play nice is accepted. Also, it may be necessary later on to patch our link into theirs and vise-versa. Don't throw the switch until I give the word, though."

"Gotcha Bats. Let me know if you need anything while I'm helping Robin and Nightwing hold down the fort here." I had put a call into my former ward Dick Grayson to help Robin keep things from getting too out of hand in Gotham since I've been away in Boston for most of the last two nights. Especially with the mass breakout at Arkham last week. There may be something going on back in Gotham that is still connected with this.

"Good, Batman out."

Dick was Robin while I was raising him, after his parents were killed by a mobster seeking protection money. Now that he is grown up, he has assumed the identity of Nightwing, his own creation. I have had two other Robin's since Dick. Jason Todd and Tim Drake, who is the current one. He has shown an adeptness at hacking that even impresses Oracle. One would think that I recruit these kids, but I don't. At least with the exception of Dick. It was inevitable that he would become a sidekick of mine when I took him in. I couldn't stop protecting Gotham while I raised a child, and I couldn't keep disappearing every night without him getting suspicious. He caught me in the act of hitting the secret switch to activate the panel to slide back, revealing the elevator that takes me down to the Batcave. He followed me down, and caught me changing into my suit that night. I made him go back upstairs, but he wouldn't cooperate until I had promised him to begin his training in the morning and get Albert to make him a costume. Jason Todd was a bit different. He was just a street punk. I caught him trying to steal my tires and sent him to a special school for troubled youths. Shortly thereafter, he helped me catch a crook. I tought I saw something in him that would turn him into a relfection of myself, but he never had the same moral convictions that I had. Tim, on the other hand, was a complete accident. He started stalking me at night, made up his own costume, had already had karate training and the afforementioned background in computer hacking, and followed a textbook stakeout procedure to home in on the location of the Batcave. One early morning, I look up and, I have a new Robin. He kinda wouldn't take no for an answer.

I go in my Batwing again to Boston and deposit myself on top of the building. I decide to go in through the roof access door this time, since I noted that there were no cameras there when last I left. I enter and proceed down the steps to the penthouse hangar and begin to snoop around the Ka-55 Black Shark. I enter the craft, assuming that anything of interest would be contained inside of the heli so that it can be accessed mid flight. Using the flourescent visor in my cowl, I find a panel in the floorboard, but the hidden compartment is empty. If they didn't clean it out as soon as they landed, they definitely cleaned it out after my first visit last night. I stick a bug underneath the pilot's chair and move downstairs to the offices to see what may be there.

I'm not really expecting anything, but it will give me a chance to place some bugs in a few of the offices. I go to the restrooms first and place bugs in the light fixtures above the sinks. I notice that the grate for the cieling vent has been removed and replaced recently. I believe that I have stumbled across the trail of the NSA agent, but he is not my prey, so I ignore it. I also place a bug in the conference room behind the white board. Lastly, I take the offices that I didn't enter on my last visit. I don't find anything in the drawers of the desks, and there are no signs of a false bottom in any of them. I switch my visor to an electro-magnetic imaging display developed by WayneTech for use by our intelligence agencies that shows any hidden metal by discerning the magnetization of the objects in view, however they didn't pick it up due to budget cuts. Looking through the visor at the desk of one of the other offices, Frederick Berg the name on the door, I see the metallic inner workings of a hidden compartment on the back underside of his desk. I work it open and extract the forms, taking photos of each to analyze later before replacing them. I also plug in another USB bug to allow Oracle access to the computers.

"Oracle, dig up anything you can get me on a Frederick Berg. I'll look it over when I get back to Gotham."

"Ok Batman. I'm storing all of the files from the USB uplinks now. See you soon. Oracle out."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"Here is what I have on Mr. Berg." Barbara says as soon as she sees me and hands me a small stack of papers.

"Thanks." I take a look at it. It seems all normal run-of-the-mill info about your average scientist. There's the problem. There was no equipment in his office, scientific or otherwise other than the computer terminal.

"This doesn't match up. See if you can dig up anything else about him in your spare time."

"What's not matching up, Bruce?"

"This file says he's a scientist, but there was no equipment in his office."

"Makes sense. None of the emails in his inbox were on his computer's hard drive."

"So the real Berg is openning his emails elsewhere. Let's go through the info from the secret compartment and see if it sets anything off for us."

"Some of these are shipping notifications for parts. Parts that could have been used to build the Black Shark. Some of these are shipping manafests for other things. Liquid nitrogen, cooling containers, radiation dampering rods, and others. Most of this stuff is coming from Kenya."

"No suprise there, Kenya's been in a civil war off and on for close to fifteen years. If you pay off the right people, you can do just about anything." I begin to mull over the non-chopper parts when it hits me like a ton of bricks. "Barbara, pull up Victor Friese's file and filter out everything in there before his marriage to Nora."

"On it." She pecks away at her keyboard for a couple of seconds and a couple of paragraphs of text come up on the screen. "It's an exact match with our Frederick Berg."

"More like Ice Berg."

"So Ra's has contracted Mr. Freeze out to do some experimentation work for him."

"And set up a dummy office for him containing all of the secret stuff while using the office with Abu's name on the door probably only as a trap for me."

"Meaning Abu uses that office for everything except checking emails, unless he is checking his through a web server."

"So Abu uses Hotmail."

"Or something like it. That certainly is a likely proposition."

"See if you can commandeer a spy satellite to look for any caves in the vacinity of Boston Harbor. That's his most likely hideout."

"Is that where you're headed after next sundown?"

"As soon as you have a location, break in to the NSA link when next you hear them talking to agent Fisher and give them the info. With any luck, they can deal with Friese during the daytime."

"What makes you think it will be a cave?"

"Friese has used them in the past, especially when he is doing experimentation on things that may blow up. He would draw much less attention in a secluded cave than in a warehouse in the middle of the city."

"Gotcha Bruce. I'll also look at some of the more rural facilities. What is the Billionaire playboy of Gotham doing today?"

"Oh, throwing cautions, and Benjamins, to the wind. I have a charity social at SemaCorp to attend."

"Hobnobbing with the rivals?"

"Rubbing their noses in the fact that they're not me."

"Bruce, I'm really glad that the public you isn't the real you. The public you is such a bastard."

"I know, but I've got to keep up appearances. Besides, Tim has been looking into some shady dealings that SemaCorp has been involved with. I'm going to jack a USB uplink into one of their mainframes while I'm there so we can see what they're up to."

"Ah, the ulterior motive."

"Yes, that's me."

Suddenly we hear a voice from behind us. "Oh, you're finally figuring out that I have ulterior motives?" It's Dick Grayson... Nightwing. Tim comes in behind him.

"Dick, you're motives have always been clear," Barbara retorts with a smile, "but I couldn't leave Gotham." There has always been some undercurrents of romance between Barbara and Dick. I know that they like each other, but with Dick's persona as Nightwing taking up residence in Bludhaven, and Barbara's allegiance to her father- Commissioner Jim Gordon- not allowing her to feel comfortable living anywhere outside of Gotham, there has always been an impasse.

"Is it time for the Dark Knight to go Knight Knight already?" Tim quips, drawing an appreciative grin from Dick.

"Dick, you're rubbing off on him. He doesn't need the encouragement." I say.

"What can I say? I have an effect on people."

"Barbara, fill them in on what we've uncovered while I go home and get some rest."

I've mentioned my opsat a few times. It's a little gadget that looks like an oversized digital wristwatch that I wear on my arm. The term opsat is short for Operational Satellite Uplink. It can do just about anything. Right now, there is a little arm extended prodding my wrist to gently nudge me awake. I can sleep just about anywhere at just about any time. Alot of military people can do this too. You go without sleep for long enough, you get rather adept at catching naps whenever you can. I look at the time. It's only 4am. The opsat is nudging me awake to read an urgent message.

- Get out Sam. We have a lead outside of the building that may yield better intel, as well as an accomplice. Lambert-

Oh, well. There's not much else that I could learn staying here anyway other than possibly taking photos of the accomplices, which was my plan, along with hoping to catch one of the collegues in the offices here if one happenned to linger behind everyone else. If I can get out of here and find an accomplice and more intel on this operation, that will be much better. Getting down the fifty-plus flights of stairs is easier than getting up here. I save shoe leather by riding the bannisters on about half of them. When I get to the bottom floor, I'm still tired and sweating rather profusely, but I don't feel near as drained as I did going up. I decide to go out the same way I came in. I get back to my hotel room within just a few minutes and check in with Third Echelon.

"Who's there and what can you tell me about this lead?"

"Hey Sam." It's Grim. "I'm sending you the satellite photo on your opsat. It seems al Ghul has contracted a former scientist truned criminal mastermind named Victor Friese to do some work for him. I've already sent you the dossier. We recieved a transmission from Batman's hacker, I don't think he's the one doing the hacking. We don't know an exact destination yet, but -" The transmission gets fuzzy for a moment.

"Sam Fisher, this is Oracle." The sound of the voice is such that you can tell it's doctored. "Sorry to barge in on your conversation. I have a location for you. There is a cave five miles northeast of Boston Harbor spewing smoke from, I presume, an explosion. That is the likely hideout of Mr. Freeze."

"Oracle. THE Oracle? Sam, this Oracle is some type of cross between a myth and a legend in hacker-space. If this is who Batman has working for him, it's no wonder our comms were compromised so easily. Oracle, I'm glad you're on our side." As she says this, I recieve a dossier for this Oracle on my opsat. It's rather sparse.

"Thanks for the assist Oracle." This is the break I've been looking for. "Maybe you can help fill in some of the holes in our Dossier on al Ghul."

"This is what we know that is not in his official dossier:" Oracle began. "He actually HAS lived for centuries. He holds the secret of a limited number of underground pools that he calls 'Lazarus Pits' that have the ability to regenerate living tissue. The fabled "Fountain of Youth" myth was actually started by someone who had seen him, first before, then after, one of his adventures to a Lazarus Pit. Noone knows when he was actually born, not even to the nearest century. He has used these Lazarus Pits to bring him back from the dead, even from fatal gunshot wounds, so it would be best to try to capture him if possible rather than trying just to kill him and move on."

"Well, I guess I'll have to deal with him the hard way, then. What info can you give us on Abu and Talia?"

"Unfortunately not much. Abu usually never leaves his master's side. Most likely that door in the building was just a trap for Batman. I've been working on trying to hack the cell traffic around the building, but I haven't been able to latch on to a signal long enough to make alot of headway. Talia is usually the one who does his outside work for her father, but evidently, her affection for the Dark Knight of Gotham has caused a slight lack of trust from Ra's. Either that, or she's working some other angle that we just haven't found out yet. We do know that she was the one that orchestrated the mass breakout at Arkham Asylum just over a week ago."

"I'm willing to bet she's working some separate angle. If she did the breakout, she probably ran off with one of the prisoners to broker a deal."

"That's my thinking, too." Grim said, getting back into the conversation after her short silence. I'm assuming she was attempting to hack Oracle's whereabouts. "I'm going to start looking into just who is still missing from that breakout that hasn't been accounted for."

"We've had some accomplices working that end, as well." Oracle replied. "So far, no sign of Talia since the mass breakout."

"What's his angle?" I ask the question that's been burning in my mind since reading the dossier. "Why does he repeatedly try to exterminate the human race?"

"He is a megalomaniacal, nihilistic, environmental extremist terrorist, made ever more dangerous by repeated boughts of Lazarus Pit-induced insanity." Oracle hits the points from the dossier and expands on them. "He believes that if he can turn the clock on the earth back to the days before human inventiveness and restore the planet's pristine beauty, he can set himself up as supreme dictator for life over all that remains. Since he keeps the secrets of the Lazarus Pits, he can be 'Dictator for Life' for centuries."

"How does he finance all of his schemes?" Grim's turn to ask her burning question. "That company running the office building is a new startup."

"He has done alot of mercenary work for terrorist groups in the middle east, since that's where he spends most of his time. He has done quite a bit of other side jobs as well. There is no telling how many other fly-by-night companies that he has started up in the last fifty years. Another call's coming in, I've gotta go. I'll check back with you later, possibly with the Bat online."

"Grim, did you ever get a fix on her signal?"

"I don't understand it. It's like Oracle bluetoothed the satellites in outer space. The signal was jumping paths and frequencies over one hundred times per second. I couldn't lock on to a signal before it was dozens of jumps old. Like I said, Sam. He or She is possibly the planet's best hacker."


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Sorry it's taken so long to update. I've been working on some other things lately that took my time away from this. Plus, I had to deal with a case of writer's block on how to handle this chapter. Most of the other stuff is done (or at least, in the case of Quest of the Faedorne, caught up with) now, so I should be getting back to posting chapters of this story on a semi-regular basis. A big "Thank You" to all who have been reading, commenting, and favoriting this story. This is an idea that I thought would be cool, and it has turned out even better than expected. Please comment if you enjoy this. Thanks!

**Chapter 6**

Grim set up a rendezvous with a chopper pilot from Hanscom to take me out over the water. They haul me out here in a twin-engine Cessna, something easily mistaken for civilian transport, so as not to raise any suspicions from anyone who didn't need to know. I will have to skydive into the water about a half a mile off of the island's coast, then swim to shore. Coast Guard patrols will pick up my gear, so I don't have to keep up with all of the extra equipment. I ask for the cornucopia package from HQ and select an EMP grenade, a flash grenade, two shock grenades, two concealable mics, and a diversion camera. I haven't used my three smoke grenades, yet, or either of my ring foils, or my lone frag grenade, so I'm ready for anything, now.

From looking at Friese's dossier, he used to be a legit scientist until his wife got sick. When she was on the verge of death, Victor Friese put her into cryogenic stasis and devoted all of his resources to finding a cure for her disease. The head of the research division, Mortimer Gary, at the university where he was conducting his experiments became angry that Friese was no longer working on the project that Gary had assigned to him, and went on a tirade, destroying his laboratory, including the cryo-pod where Nora Friese, Victor's wife, was still in stasis. This caused a leak of gases and chemicals that drove Gary from the room, but Friese was committed to saving his beloved wife, even at the cost of his own life. He didn't die, though, but now only survives in arctic temperature environments. He created a suit that allows him to survive in warmer environs by circulating air through a compartment filled with liquid nitrogen, providing an endless supply of sub-freezing air to encompass his body. He was driven insane by his experience, and has been classified by Arkham Asylum's Psyche doctors as paranoid delusional, thinking that everyone is out to kill his beloved Nora. He lives for nothing less than curing the disease and bringing her back. However, in the process, he has turned to a life of crime, as Mr. Freeze, for reasons of both funding his research, and getting even with those who have wronged him. The big problem is, he sees everything through the perspective that everyone is trying to destroy his research, just as Gary did. One messed up individual, but I can almost sympathize with him. I know how it hurt when I lost Regan, even though we weren't even together anymore at the time. I still loved her. We didn't split up because we no longer cared for each other, we split up because I was still working for the CIA and she had settled down into a nice private life away from international espionage to raise our daughter, Sarah. Losing her hurt like hell, and reading this dossier brings back all of those painful memories.

This suit that he wears seems to have a glass dome covering the head. That could be a weak point to exploit if I need to, a ring foil to the dome could possibly at the very least blind him, if not completely exposing him to the warmer outside air. I figure, if I get backed into a corner, I'll throw the EMP grenade. If his equipment is EMP shielded, then I'll have to resort to the shock grenade. That should do the trick, but if not, then I'll hit him with the ring foil. I don't want to kill him, I want to interrogate him. If I wanted to just kill him, I could just swim to shore, slip into his cave, sneak up to him and pop him with my Five-seveN. I've done hundreds of ops just like that, but only when there is no need for interrogation. Colonel Lambert wants to know what he knows about al Ghul's operation. Heck, I do too... Most of the good intel should be there, since the offices in the hangar-topped skyscraper have yet to yield any solid leads.

I close everything on my opsat except for the GPS so that I'll know where I am in relation to my target. Fortunately, few people pay close attention to exactly what watches everyone else is wearing, because it is a bit oversized for a wristwatch and might raise some questions. Of course, I don't plan on getting close enough to anyone to blow my cover until it's too late for that human ice-sickle to do anything but panic and spill the beans. I've got to be careful, though. The dossier also says that his freezer-suit also gives him superhuman strength and the ability to shoot a chemical mixture that freezes solid immediately upon contact with solid matter... like, for example, me.

The HALO jump, High Altitude/Lo Opening, used to be standard operating procedure to avoid radar detection until just a few years ago, when it was discovered that if the parachute opens while the jumper is still too high to show up on radar, the equipment doesn't register it as hostile. Now almost all paratroopers practice the much safer High Altitude/High Opening jumps unless attempting to avoid the old-fashioned line-of-sight detection. I exit the plane wearing a scuba-suit beneath my windsuit, with my normal stealth suit underneath all of that. With the three layers on, I don't really feel the high-altitude weather as badly. My face starts to freeze, though, by the time I've cleared my ride enough to safely deploy the chute. After that, I have some time to kill while I slowly float down to the bouy that I'm aiming for. Too bad there's absolutely nothing to do. I keep myself occupied by checking the GPS function on my opsat to make sure that I have the correct heading and am staying on target.

After what seems like an eternity, I am finally able to get a visual on the bouy that the Coast Guard deployed along with my air tank and an SDV, a submersible diving vehicle that looks like a torpedo with handlebars. As I begin to near it, I start to unzip my windsuit down to the straps for the parachute and get my arms out of the sleeves. I then relocate the handles on the pull ropes, pull them in close, and hit the buckle on the chute, freeing me to unzip the windsuit the rest of the way. I begin to lose control of the chute without it being attached to my body, but that's ok. I just use the pull ropes to help invert my body and let go. I have just enough time to get my hands in front of my goggles before I hit the water. The goggles don't come off, but I do have to straighten them a bit.

I think I hit it pretty good. I come up right at the bouy, grab the tank, strap it on, and then click the start on the submersible motor. These things aren't built for speed, but they do help keep a swimmer from getting winded. Our boys in the special forces have been using them for quite a while. This one has been rigged to emit a signal that is irritating for deep sea predators, such as sharks, to hear. That keeps away the uninvited guests.

My opsat is not only waterproof but senses when it is submerged and automatically brightens the screen so I don't have to surface in order to change the display settings. I keep an eye on it for the first few seconds so that I know that I have the correct heading. As I begin to get nearer, I start to wonder if this is the perp that al Ghul's daughter took off with after the Arkham breakout that she orchestrated. I minimize the GPS feature for a few minutes to bring up the list of escapees on the opsat and scroll through them. No mention of Friese. He must have broken out some time sooner and he's been laying low until now. Probably because he's had a steady income for his research. By the time I have gotten through the list and closed the file, bringing the GPS app back up, I notice that I'm right on top of the island. I surface just enough to get my eyes above water so that I can make a visual on the island. I should make landfall in a few minutes from now. I get myself back under the water and dive down a few feet so that I can type on my opsat without accidentally surfacing the SDV. I send HQ a message: "LANDFALL IMMINENT".

I have a girl on each arm when I exit my limo for the social at SemaCorp. When you're a millionaire playboy in Gotham City, finding a date - or two - for the evening is not very difficult. Just call the office for Gotham Fashion and ask if any of their models would like to spend the evening at a charity social for the high and mighty. There are always plenty of not-quite-there-yet models that are hungry for time in front of the tabloid cameras hoping to spur their career potential. As we head through the door and into the crowd, it doesn't take long for my dates to go their own way. I grab them each a drink, and then they begin to mingle. I make a circuit of the crowd just to see who all is there, and that's when I spot her.

Manfred Semansky is the founder and CEO of SemaCorp. He founded his own corporation about a year ago after spending five years as a Compliance Advisor at Gotham Bank, then spending the last five years making the rounds as a public speaker and TV talking head. His corporation supposedly matches older businesses with companies that offer newer technologies for those businesses. Why those businesses wouldn't just buy the equipment straight from the source and seek out a capital investment firm to front the money and avoid having to pay interest has always puzzled me. Tim has recently found some evidence that not all of their dealings are necessarily pristine. It makes sense that they would be a front for some nefarious deeds since everyone has been questioning their business model. Now that I see the woman who is on her arm, I am convinced. What is Talia doing here? There has to be some link between the shady dealings that Tim uncovered and one of the escapees from Arkham Asylum, but which one? Semansky didn't break out. Who's the connection? I quickly snap a picture of the couple with my cell camera and send Barbara a picture message with the caption: "Talia!" Hopefully, this will be the break Oracle needs to piece this whole mess together. If not, I still haven't even started on what I came here to do, yet. I can't take the chance on Talia spotting me before I get the uplink attached, so I go ahead and head over to the door into the hallway so I can hunt down the mainframe. Normally, I would speak to the host just to let him see me before I lose myself in the crowd, but I can't take the chance on Talia blowing my cover. I've almost made it to safety when I hear someone call my name... It's Semansky... Damn. I quickly pick up a glass of wine from the table nearest me and dump the contents of the other wineglass that I had been carrying into the fresh one.

"Manny, my boy!" I try to act like I'm a bit tipsy. "You're throwing one heckuva party, but you're going a bit shkimpy on the wine. You wouldn't be afraid that your gueshhs would all get shipty... uh... tippy... uh... tipshy, yeah, that'sh right! Tipshy, would ya? Now, THISH. Thish ish a perfeckly filled wineglassh. Oopsh! I shpilled a little. Darn it, that'sh alchohol abushe." As I finish saying this, I begin to lick some of the spilled liquid off of my hand. "Who's the armie on your hot? Uh... I mean, the hottie on your arm?"

"The name's Talia." She says as she extends her hand. I take it and give a rather flimsy shake, trying to sell the drunken playboy gag. "I'm a recently aquired business associate of Mr. Semansky's. Glad to make your aquaintance."

"Likewishe, missh." I say as I down the overflowing glass of wine in one gulp. "Don't worry, I'm not alwaysh one to dret ash shkunk ash a gunk."

Fortunately, Semansky has had all of my act that he can stand and finds another guest to socialize with. I'm off the hook, for now, but my cover is blown. I'm going to have to work fast. I pick up another glass of wine and head out through the door into the hallway and begin to make my way to where I believe the mainframe to be. Fortunately, I was able to get a schematic of the building from Oracle. I have to use an electronic codebreaker to get into the server room, then it's just a matter of seconds to locate a suitable USB port.

Breathing deeply in an attempt to send more oxygen to my brain to help head off any alchohol-tinged fuzziness, I message Barbara as soon as I enter the room to be ready to recieve the upload. Just as I am about to plug in the uplink, I hear someone in the room with me. I quickly plug in the device, and turn to ward off my attacker. I see three rather recognizeable forms. The same brand of thugs that Ra's normally uses for his dealings. I deliver a kick to the first one, pushing off from the console to get more force, and more importantly more reach, on the kick. I then brush aside a punch delivered by the one on my right, countering with a punch to the side of his ribcage, then I grab the arm that he had punched with and spin him around into the third attacker. I then go back to the first attacker and deliver a haymaker into the back of his head as he is attempting to stand back up. Then I pick him back up and throw him into the other two attackers, knocking them back down again. One of them catches his head against the corner of another console, I won't have to worry about him getting back in the fight. The other two try to get back up, one a good bit slower since he's the one that took the haymaker. I kick him in the head first, knocking him out. Now it's down to just one-against-one. He tries to deliver a punch-kick combo, but I dodge the fists and catch the leg. I throw the captured leg into the air and basically flip him over. As he gets back up again, I grab the wineglass from off of the console and throw the drink in his face, blinding him. Then all I have to do is grab his head on both sides and slam it down into my ascending knee. He drops like a sack of bricks.

I leave the server room and wonder back out into the hall. I message Oracle to blow the uplink as soon as the download is complete, then I begin to head back to the party.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

I left the party after about another half hour of making sure that I was seen there, so noone would expect that I was doing anything covert. Noone other than Talia, that is. I have Alfred drop me off in an alleyway that serves as a remote batcave so that I can change into my cape and cowl. It's evening, now. Time for the bat to come out.

"Oracle, have you made any progress on the files from SemaCorp yet?" I hit my comm as soon as I'm in my gear.

"Not much, but your ID'ing Talia there means that they're definitly hip-deep in all of this." She replies. "Where are you headed now?"

"Straight to you. I'll help you go over the data. I'm sure something in there will give us what we need."

"I've got Tim here helping too. He's the most familiar with what they've been up to of any of us, so I drafted him."

"Good call. Tell him to give the whole database a quick scan through to see if he can find anything that rings a bell."

"Already on it, boss!" Tim chimes in.

"OK. I'll let you both get back to work and I'll pitch in when I get there. Batman out."

By the time I've reached Barbara's workroom in the clock tower, they have gone through enough data to give me a fairly decent account of what SemaCorp's dealings are.

"Bruce," Oracle greets me as I'm coming in through her window, "I was using some of my spare time this morning to dig up what I could on our NSA guy, Sam Fisher."

"What did you find out?" I reply, intrigued. "Is he the 'super soldier' type that we thought from his assault on Scarface's hideout?"

"Bad-ass of bad-asses!" Robin says with a huge grin on his face.

"Bruce, this is some seriously super-secret stuff." She says. "He is a Splinter Cell attached to a department within the NSA called Third Echelon, which is probably the most highly classified department within the US intelligence community. It took some serious work to get this intel without setting off every Black Ice program in the whole continent."

"He's a one-man army." Tim adds. "He does the stuff that the CIA or other NSA agents have given up on, or just simply cannot do."

"I can't tell you what he's done mission-wise since joining Third Echelon, but as deeply as his file was buried, he's probably this nation's best-kept secret." She expands. "The handlers that he talks to are Anna Grimsdottir and Carly St. John. Carly is the more gifted hacker of the two, while Grim is the more military-minded. The other guy, Irving Lambert, is the head of the department. I was able to pull a dossier of Fisher out of some old KGB files that said that he was likely CIA. That's back during the Cold War. He has been in the intelligence community for a long time."

"Good work, Barbara." I congratulate her. She didn't need to risk so much to get that info, but I'm confident that she knows her limitations and I'm sure that not knowing anything about the NSA people that she was talking to was driving her crazy. "At least now we can be sure that he can do the job. What have you uncovered on the files I sent you?"

"Ok, here's what we've uncovered so far." Barbara begins with the rundown. "SemaCorp has set itsself up as a front company for almost the whole of the criminal underworld of Gotham City. Your suspicions were confirmed about their stated business model. They've done almost no business along the lines of what they tell the public that their business is about. In fact, the only businesses that they have done along the lines of what they advertise, is with other front companies. We've also uncovered some communications from persons within the corporation, to your favorite black market smuggler."

"The Penguin." He certainly makes sense as being the contact with Talia. She's probably assisting with all of the imported freight coming from her father.

"Exactly. I even uncovered scanned copies of the same papers that you found in the secret compartment of the desk in that high rise building in Boston. Except these were signed: 'Oswald Cobblepot.' That gives us a direct connection."

"So she orchestrates the mass breakout at Arkham and takes off with the Penguin to bring in and assemble the parts of the Black Shark that had been shipped in piecemeal. Then, they blow up the gun shop to cover their tracks and fly the chopper to the high rise hangar building in Boston to await the next phase of al Ghul's plan, whatever that is."

"That certainly fits the info we have now. Evidently, that Ka-55 Russian heli has something to do with whatever Ra's has planned. Since this prototype is EMP-shielded, I'm almost afraid to think about what that means."

"It means that we had better stop whatever plan Ra's is hatching soon, before that EMP-shielding comes in handy. It's a good thing Talia was stuck being room decor at the party. All of this evidence is probably lost, now. Run a quick search through all of the shipping manafests for anything EMP-related."

"One step ahead of you, boss!" Tim says. My newest Robin is a rather gifted hacker in his own right, so Oracle borrows him whenever she needs an extra hand. "I've got a crate that just came in last night containing fifty EMP grenades, with another crate in the same shipment containing a number of EMP shell devices. Not sure of the exact specs, but the Japanese have been testing some of the same type of devices that can continuously broadcast an EMP over a one-mile radius using solar panels to stay charged."

"Three guesses what Freeze is working on in that cave of his." I interject. "Any news yet on whether Fisher was able to make contact?"

"Nothing yet, but I know he was on his way a couple of hours ago." Barbara replies. "Last communication that I was able to receive, he was getting ready to do a parachute jump to the island."

"Hopefully we can catch a break and Freeze will know the whole plan. I kind of doubt it, though."

"So, what is your next move? Are you going to see if you can get in on the fun on the island, or do you have other plans?"

"I think it's time I tried to track down a penguin, see what I can learn from that end. Hopefully Fisher can hold up his end. Next time you hear chatter between him and his handlers, break in and make sure they know what we've just uncovered."

"Sure thing, Bruce."

It's beginning to get dark as I reach the shore of the island and peel off my scuba gear. I leave the SDV and my scuba gear beached and get on my comm to let HQ know that I'm on land. It's not quite dark, yet, so I'll have to be careful.

As soon as I comm HQ, Oracle breaks in on the transmission and gives us some new info. Evidently, whatever Friese is working on in there has something to do with EMP's, and Batman is on his way to track down another lead in Gotham. I was beginning to wonder what he was up to. Fortunately for me, the osprey is fully shielded against EMP and many other forms of attack, and my comm, trident goggles, and opsat are also EMP shielded.

"Thanks for the info, Oracle. We owe you one." Lambert says. He had once been ordered to give Carly up to another department whose sole purpose was to try to figure out who Oracle is. After a full month, the program was aborted due to lack of progress. I'm glad now that they never uncovered anything.

"Sam, be careful." Grim says as I receive a dossier from her on my opsat, probably of the Cobblepot perp. "No telling what Friese has for security."

"Will do." I reply as I flip down my goggles and turn on the infra-red. "I think I'll swim up to Gotham when I'm done. I've heard of the wild night life there."

"That depends on what happens tonight, Sam." Lambert cuts in. "Both with you, and with the Bat. Keep us posted on your progress, Oracle, but don't make this info public just yet, or we'll have full-scale panic on our hands."

"You've got my word on that, sir." Oracle affirms. "Although, I am going to hand over some of the dirt on SemaCorp to the GCPD so that they'll be on alert."

"Good call. I'm going to send this up the chain of command myself and get the FBI and CIA rolling on this. Sam, we've got visual through your goggles, and we're also tracking you with our eye-in-the-sky. Don't give us any reason for concern. Lambert out."

I meander aroud the island to get a lay of the land and also to get my bearings. The IR helps me to avoid some of the booby-traps that have been placed around the island, and I'm able to make out the entrance to the cave with little difficulty as the sun begins to hang low in the sky. I turn up the body heat control on my suit as soon as I see the inside of the cave. It's coated in a thick layer of ice. It's going to be freezing in there. Hopefully, in addition to fighting off the chill of the icy cave, I can also store up enough body heat in this suit to melt my way out of the ice if I get hit. I lift up the trident goggles. They're made to rest easily on my forhead when not in use so that they don't fall down into my face constantly as I'm going about my business. The downside of that is that, back at HQ, Lambert and Grim are no longer getting a good view at what I'm seeing, but with everything in that cave being as cold as ice, including Friese, there would be nothing for the IR to detect.

I begin to make my way into the cave, and the thought crosses my mind that it's going to be useless looking for shadow in this place. Have you ever noticed that when it snows, the snow seems to give off its own light? I notice the same effect in here. The light gets reflected so easily that even the diffused light of farther away sources like, in the case of snow, street lamps and stars get reflected at near full intensity, so that it seems to put out its own light. There are obviously quite a few light sources inside the cave; be it monitors, light bulbs, or whatever. I can see their reflected light all around me as I enter the cave. I try to give myself some way to dodge a potential attack at each step in here, and I figure that the best way to do that is to stay close to a wall. Not much footing here on solid ice, so I'll just have to push off of a wall if I have to dive out of the way of an attack. I go ahead and pull a smoke grenade and try to see each corner as I come to it, being careful not to expose myself too much too quickly.

Reflecting light as easy as it does, the icy surface also acts almost as a kind of mirror, so I am able to see him as discoloration in the reflection in the walls before I am able to see his actual shape. I pull the pin on my smoke grenade, and hold it for a couple seconds, "cooking" the grenade to speed up the length of time between when I release, and when it does its job. At the count of three, I see his shoulder peeking around the corner, and throw it at what I suspect is his eye level. It blows up right in front of the glass bubble that covers his head. The bubble is made of some high-grade stuff, because it doesn't shatter. It does, however, crack a bit and disorients him for a second. I use that time to dive into a roll and bounce off of the opposite wall into another roll, coming up behind him. By the time he gets his bearings, the fairly narrow passageway of the cave is beginning to fill with blackish grey smoke. I think he's lost me, so I take the time to fit a ring foil on my SC20K rifle and deliver a shot right to the glass dome of his suit. This time it shatters, and a cloud of white smoke mixes with the cloud of black smoke, further obscuring Mr. Freeze's vision. I take the opportunity to go deeper into the cave, looking for the equipment that I know is there. I find the terminals and other equipment that he has been using for his experiments. I find a relatively obscure place to stick a remote mic, between two machines, and begin to access the terminal, beginning an upload process to send all of the hard drive's data to Grim at HQ.

I turn around just in time to dodge a blast from Friese's ice blaster. I toss a flashbang at him and it does the trick, blinding him. As he attempts to get his vision back, I close and stuff an EMP grenade down the inside of his suit, through the hole that I made with the ring foil. It goes off inside of his suit and fries all of the electronics in the suit. EMP grenades don't harm humans, other than maybe a slight shock and minor burn. One punch later, he's on the ground and the interrogation begins. I finger the sensor in my throat to make sure that HQ hears it all.

"Talk." I don't want to waste words. With me incapacitating his gadget-maker and the Bat probably taking out his supply line, Ra's will most likely speed up the timetable of whatever he had planned. "What does al Ghul have you making here?"

"I'm not 'making' anything." Friese says, looking defeated. He doesn't even seem to be able to move in the suit without the electronics. It's probably too heavy. "I'm simply improving on an existing design. The Iranians stole some designs for a Japanese EMP shell device, and sold hundreds of them to the Demon's Head. All I'm doing is increasing the effective range from one mile to five."

"What does he plan to do with all of those devices once they're completed?"

"I haven't been told. He only promised that he would fund my research to save my beloved Nora."

"You know he'll double-cross you as soon as he gets what he wants, don't you?"

"No." He begins to sound desperate. Good. "He won't... He CAN'T! I MUST save her! My beloved... My Nora." His eyes begin to tear up.

"How were you going to make the shipments?"

"Penguin sends a cargo-sub once a week. The last shipment was two days ago. I sent the first full shipment of fifty, after the initial dozen modified devices I had sent to make sure they met his specifications."

"Sam." It's Grim. "With that many shell devices and that much range, they could place one on any building nearby a power plant and knock out electricity all over the US! That's got to be what he's planning!"

"This is Oracle. I've been listening in on the interrogation. I'll relay this info to the Batman. He's still working on tracking down the Penguin's hiding place. He's got dozens of them."

"Noted." Lambert interjects. "Keep us posted on the Bat's progress. Sam, we've got all we need. Get out of there. We've got a chopper coming to give you a lift to Gotham."

"I'm going to let you live so that you can try to save your wife, Friese." I say as I get back up, fingers off the com. "Don't make me regret my decision." I roll him over - DAMN this suit is heavy - and undo the clasps on the back so he can get out. "I'm heading back to Gotham."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

As I step out of the cave and onto the beachy shore of the island, I pull my satellite phone out of the osprey and start dialing. I have a few minutes before my ride comes, and I want to give Sarah some fair warning. She answers her cell after only a couple of rings.

"Hello?" I may be biased because she's my daughter, but I believe that she has the sweetest voice in the world. She sounds alot like her mother.

"Hey, Sarah. It's me." I don't spend much time with pleasantries because I wan't her to know that I'm calling her about something important.

"Hi, daddy! This is a suprise. Are you done with your assignment?"

"No, and things may get messy soon. Listen, put a few extra gallons of gas in jugs in your trunk. if the electricity goes out in your area, try to make it home and go downstairs to my study. There's a secure phone down there that I installed specifically as a line out during an EMP event. Call me back then on my satellite phone and I'll tell you how to get into the shelter. There is enough food down there to last you a couple of weeks if anything happens."

"Why?" She starts to sound scared. "What's going on? You're not in danger are you?"

"No more than usual, sweetie. It's just that there is a lunatic with close to a hundred EMP devices on his hands and we're expecting him to target as many power plants as he can knock out. I hope to take him down before he can follow through with his plan, but if he sets them off before I'm able to find him, I want you to know what to do to stay safe."

"I was actually getting ready to head back home tonight. I can leave earlier, it's not like I'm doing anything really important. It is Friday, after all."

Damn, sometimes on these missions, my days get so run together that I forget what day it is. "Hopefully, we can get this straightenned out in a day or two. I just wanted to go ahead and call you now, because the perp I'm after is probably going to speed up his time table. I can't say too much, but loonies like him are dangerous when they get desperate."

"Can I bring a friend?"

"If it's a girl, no problem. If it's a guy, keep your clothes on or I might have to kill him when I get home." That made her laugh.

"It's ok dad, I was thinking about bringing my new roommate home this weekend. Her name is Kumiko. She's an exchange student from Japan."

"Well, hopefully, I can get finished up quickly here and meet her. My ride's coming, honey. I'll talk to you later."

"Later dad. Stay safe."

"You too, sweetheart."

"I love you dad."

"Love you too, Sarah."

I get the phone stuck back into the osprey just as the chopper lands and climb in with no time wasted.

"On the bird and outbound." I finger the comm and report in.

"Good work, Fisher." It's Lambert. "I've got our eye-in-the-sky panning back over to the building that we've been eyeing. We should know the second that Black Shark prototype takes off again. Anything further to report on your end."

"Yes. I think I figured out what that shipment of EMP grenades was for." I pause, in case he wants to squeeze a word in. "I think that Friese was converting them over to ammunition for an XM25 rocket launcher."

"That explains how they were able to take out our boys' Raptors the other night. He must have made one or two of those rockets as a test before Cobblepot's operation was even set up, but how the HELL did they get their hands on an XM25?"

The XM25 rocket launcher is the top of the line technologically speaking. Equipped with a range finder and programmable payload, so that you can set it to detonate at a specific range. They must have estimated the distance that the fighter jets were going to be based on radar readings and guessed right.

"Terrorist groups ambushing the right squad at the right time in the middle east could pick them up easily. We already know al Ghul is getting equipped at least partially by the Iranians."

"Damn. This just looks like a bigger mess every time I think about it."

"You would think that someone who's lived for over one thousand years would have learned some patience. He could lay low for a while and give us a break."

"Unfortunately his longevity is due to the Lazarus Pits, which have turned him into a raving loon, so we won't have that luxury."

While talking with the Colonel, I get a message from Grim on my opsat. Grim is assuming that I have already called Sarah, that woman knows me better than I know myself, I think. She is, of course, not mentioning this on comm due to the opsat being more secure. I confirm and let her know that she is bringing her roommate, Kumiko, home to use the bunker if needed. Grim asks if I have a last name for the roommate. I tell her no, but she's an exchange student from Japan, so that would help thin the possibilities if Grim were to decide to dig up that info on her own.

"Any idea where you're going to start once you reach Gotham, Sam?" Lambert inquires.

"I figure all shipments have to come through the docks sometime. That should give me a foot in the door. Hopefully, I can stumble across something there."

Right about that time, the co-pilot asks where I would like to be dropped off. I tell him. "Gotham harbor." He leans over to the pilot and the pilot nods. There is a slight change in bearing, and then we are again as straight as a yardstick. Nothing to do now but wait.

There are a number of different ways that I could have gone about this, but the most promising one presented itsself when I noticed that a cargo ship pulled into port with a few unlisted crates on board. I've already checked the contents of the crates and verified that the contents are consistent with what I am expecting the Penguin to be retrieving. I placed a tracking sensor with the cargo to allow me to track any movement. Now, it's just a matter of waiting until the cargo is moved. I have my watercraft as well as my batmobile on standby to be able to track the payload wherever, and however, it goes.

Oracle tuned my comm into the feed of the transmissions between Fisher and his cohorts with the NSA, so I know what to expect. I didn't have her patch me completely into the conversation because there was really nothing to report as yet. I'm sure they would know how this kind of thing goes. It's something that they do on an almost daily basis. I'm just hoping that, since Fisher has dealt with Freeze, Penguin and Talia - or her father - aren't able to quickly find another mad scientist to make the alterations to the EMP shell devices. Hopefully, I'm able to disrupt Penguin's supply line tonight and it won't matter, but anything is possible and time is of the essence. I, too, agree with their assessment that Ra's is going to speed up his time-table once he learns of the molestations of his operation tonight.

A little over an hour after dark, my tracker begins sensing movement. Good. Now, just to see where it goes. I see one of the crates in question suspended from a cable hooked to a crane. The crane places the crate onto the trailer of a cargo truck, and is then simply driven into one of the cargo hangars. That's odd. I make my way across the rooftops to the offending hangar using my grapnel to help propel myself across the gaps between buildings until I get to the correct one. When I get to my destination, I peer into the building through a skylight. Nothing is there, but I see where it went as there is a gap in the floor as most of the floor is rising back up to ground level. There is another truck being loaded with the other crate, so I look for a window to crawl through and wait for the right moment. The second truck pulls into the hangar and gets into position. Then, one of the dock workers presses a button near the door and the floor begins to lower the truck down to the hidden drive. I wait for the driver's eye-level to get below the floor, and I throw a couple of batarangs that give off an electrical shock. Hopefully, that will keep anyone on the docks from using radio transmission to alert Penguin that I'm coming. I quickly drop onto the top of the crate, then move to the back to ensure that I stay out of sight of the driver. I click down my visor and activate the GPS feature to keep track of where I am at in the city.

"Oracle, I'm heading west beneath the city through a tunnel that I'm assuming was built by the Penguin as a secretive route to bring goods into his hideout." I inform her. "Keep an eye on my whereabouts through my transmitter and inform Fisher where the loot is when he reports in."

"Got it." She replies.

"Boss, you were right." It's Robin. "I took the portable GPR into the sewer entrance closest to the SemaCorp building, and there was a large room underneath it. It's already been emptied of any contents or occupants. Recently, from the looks of it. There are signs of traffic everywhere."

"I knew they would clear out of there once Talia made me at the social. See if you can follow the trail." I tell him. "With any luck, we'll both wind up in the same place. If not, we've got twice the intel. Just be careful. They're probably expecting pursuit from your direction."

"Copy that. Oracle, keep tabs on my position, too. Robin out."

"Oracle, let me know if we DON'T end up in the same place. I want to know where he is if he isn't wherever this truck is heading."

"Gotcha. If you go to different coordinates, I'll send agent Fisher to rendezvous with Robin. Oracle out."

"I'm with the kid." It's Nightwing. "The two of us should be able to handle anything that these guys can throw at us. If someone starts to run, let Fisher help chase. He's coming in through the docks, Barb, so give him keys to the Batmobile."

"Not a bad idea." I chime back in. "Most likely, Talia and Penguin are in the same place. If they start to run, they will probably split up and we'll need an extra hand. Oracle, as soon as Fisher gets to the docks, use the remote for the batmobile to drive up to the insertion point. He can take it from there. Batman out."

By the time we finish our conversation, we hear chatter over the comms from the NSA guys. They are in sight of the harbor. Should be landing in a few minutes. Oracle relays the info and lets them know where to set agent Fisher down to find his ride.

No sooner has the chatter died down than the truck begins to slow down. Looks like I'm at my destination. I press myself flat against the back of the crate and wait for an opportunity to dissappear. Unfortunately, the type of trailer that the crate has been loaded on doesn't allow for someone to hang on the bottom, so I get my grapnel ready to fire at a moment's notice. Soon after going through a set of double doors, I see my chance. I fire my grapnel into the ceiling and dissappear into the rafters. As soon as I'm in position, I survey the area for either main target. No dice.

"Robin, Nightwing, no sign of Talia or the Penguin here." I warn them. "It may be that you are going to run into them first. Be especially careful."

As they begin to open the latest cargo crate, I hit the switch on the tracker I had placed in there earlier. The tracker that I used also contained a small explosive. Why wouldn't I? I don't want anyone to be able to use these things. Especially here in my city. They had been able to unload a couple of the units in the first crate, but everything in that second crate should be scrap now. I use the confusion to wrap up things with the rest of the Penguin's thugs here. I drop down on top of one thug, bringing him to the ground and throw my batarang at another, staggering him. I use the distraction to close the distance and grab him, throwing him into yet another thug. After finishing them off, I throw a smoke grenade into a group of three, throw on my gas mask, and jump down into the confusion, delivering a kick to one, blocking the punch of another, grabbing him by his collar and pulling him past me so that he slams face-first into the crate behind me. The last one I take out with a roundhouse kick to the head. By the time the remaining thugs realize that I'm in here with them, there are only two left. One tries to run, so I stop him with a batarang, and the other ends up running right into me. I take him down quickly with a well-placed elbow, and close on the remaining thug. Time to have a little conversation. See what this guy knows.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

As I exit the chopper, a car pulls up to me and the hatch on top opens. Actually, it's almost more of a jet on wheels. "Sam, this is the Oracle. Batman is lending you his wheels and thanks you for your help. Get in."

I enter the cockpit as instructed, and as I do, I notice that this thing has more buttons, knobs, and switches than even a fighter jet. I've flown fighter jets before, but this would require an extensive crash course to learn what the vast majority of these controls do, so I'll just keep it basic: gas, gears, steers, and brakes. That much I'm sure I can handle. This thing is a high-tech marvel. Upon closer inspection, I see that the vehicle is equipped with military-grade reactive armor, as well as a fire-resistant titanium alloy for most of the shell. It even has a turbine afterburner for increased acceleration. As soon as I get seated and latch the seatbelt, the hatch slides closed and a screen next to the sterring wheel lights up with a GPS showing the streets with a faint underlay showing the sewer tunnels. There is a dot on the screen that is blinking. I shift the vehicle into Drive, and leave, heading for the blinking dot.

"Batman came up relatively empty in the cargo unloading area that he just cleared." Oracle informs me. "That means, that his associates, Nightwing and Robin, are probably making contact with Penguin and Talia. They are the blinking dot you see on the GPS. Head there now."

"What do you mean by 'relatively empty'?" I ask.

"Meaning that the prime targets are elsewhere. He's interrogating the remaining henchman, but the guy's just a lackey and probably doesn't know anything that we haven't already found out."

"Actually, I did find out one small detail from Penguin's goon." It's Batman. "Their original target date was two weeks from yesterday. Obviously, Ra's is going to speed up his timetable to cause at least a little mayhem as soon as he finds out that we've spoiled his plans. Sam, I'm going to go hitch a ride on the Batcycle and meet you there."

I'm almost right on top of the target location according to the GPS. I pull into the alley and proceed the rest of the way on foot. I need to find a sewer entrance or... ah, THERE. I enter through a subway maintainance hatch and proceed through Gotham's subterranean infrastructure to my target destination. The time on foot gives me a chance to check my opsat. Grim had sent me a message while I was driving the Bat's hot rod. She says that Sarah's friend is Kumiko Negami, eldest daughter of Hiroshi Negami, Energy Secretary of Japan. I hope Sarah got her and got started home before al Ghul decided to hunt for a hostage.

"Sam, I'm picking up the locator beacon from Batman's associates and sending the location, along with a detailed layout of the tunnels to your opsat." Grim informs me. "You should be just about on top of them. There's a door, fifty feet ahead on your left. That should be your target."

"Copy that. Thanks Grim." I reply. "Has anyone told the Japanese that we've found out where their missing prototype EMP shell device got to?"

"I just got off of the phone with the head of Japanese Intelligence, Fisher." It's the Colonel. "They know about the situation, and their operatives here in the states are being informed as we speak to lend any aid necessary."

Just then, Grim sends a message to my opsat asking if I want her to give Japanese Intelligence my address as where Kumiko is being taken. I give the ok, but tell her that they still have to get there first. It would make me feel better if someone was watching the house once they arrived. Grim then responds that she called Sarah with a route home that would avoid close proximity to any power plants, the only problem being that my house is within three miles of one. She informed me that Kumiko is with Sarah now and they were heading to the store to buy gas cans to fill, then it would be non-stop to home. The route that Grim has plotted will take them about 10 hours to drive.

"I see the door." I say as I finger the comm. "I'll be through it shortly."

Just then, I hear another voice over the comm. "This is Robin. We've got them on the run. Penguin is heading Northeast into the subway tunnels, Talia is heading West to an abandoned elevator shaft." Two seconds later, the door I'm reaching for opens and an odd-looking, short, obese man carrying an umbrella and wearing a monocle, black tophat and black tuxedo comes running out, screaming "Keep Boy Blunder senior and Boy Blunder junior busy. I-oof..." I don't let him finish the sentence. One punch, and he's on the floor.

"Talk fast Cobblepot!" I say as I hold a gun to his head, and I have him in a choke hold with my off hand while fingering the comm. It's a move that I have honed with years of practice. "Where's Ra's? Where are these EMP shell devices going after Friese is done boosting them?"

"My, don't we have a sunny disposition?" Cobblepot quips. "You must work for the government, you sound just as friendly as those neanderthals at the DMV."

"Answer me!"

"Wouldn't you like to know." As he says this, something sprays into my face from the tip of his umbrella. This was one of the things in his dossier, he has multiple umbrellas, each with a specific hidden use. I'm assuming that he's trying to hit me with some knock out gas. I was ready for it. As long as you don't breathe it in, it can't harm you. That doesn't mean I have to let him know that. Many times, an adversary will be most vulnerable when he believes you to no longer be a threat. I fall back, land up against the wall, and stay motionless for a few seconds. I'm out of the gas cloud now, at least, so it's ok to take a slow, shallow breath.

"I'm sorry I can't be more informative," Cobblepot says as he turns around to face me, "but as soon as Talia gets it, it's out of my hands and property of SemaCOOOOOooyyyfff-" Hmph, penguins DO have balls. As I stand up, I take a sip from my stealth suit, then spit the water back out into my hands to wash any residue of the gas off of my face. As I do this, a teenaged kid comes through the door dressed in red and green, with a black cape. Cobblepot's rolled over into a fetal position, holding his throbbing jewels. I knock him out from behind with the butt of my Five-seveN. It's probably a relief for him.

"You must be agent Fisher. I'm Robin. I'll take care of this one." He says as he takes out a length of rope. "You help catch up with Talia. Oracle, tell the authorities that Penguin's subdued in the subway tunnels west of maintainance hatch 11, green tunnel."

I relay the info that Talia is using her connections at SemaCorp to ship the devices out to an unknown location. As I say this, the update comes through to my opsat showing what building the abandoned elevator shaft leads to at street level. I guess it's back topside for me.

I have an alert going off on my PDA. The Black Shark is moving. Seconds later, I hear the one called Lambert alerting us that their spy satellite has detected the Russian prototype KA-55 heli leaving the hangar-topped skyscraper in Boston. I had told Oracle earlier to keep channels open between us and the folks at Third Echelon as soon as Fisher made Gotham Harbor to make it easier for everyone to communicate.

"Nightwing, I'm closing on your position on the Batcycle." I inform as I approach the building. "Do you still have a visual on Talia?"

"She's heading for the roof." He replies. "I just lost her as she exited at the top floor of the shaft. I'm not far behind her."

"I was afraid of that. That's ok, though, I have the Batwing in route. Oracle, Fisher and Robin are coming back topside. Route the Batmobile to their position."

"Already on it, Bats." She replies.

"Good." I'm forming a plan of attack as I go along on this one. "Robin, you navigate for Fisher and work the system controls while he drives."

"No prob." He says. "You don't think she's staying on that roof long, do you?"

"She's got something waiting for her as a getaway." I reply. "She's like her father, they don't do anything without a plan. She meant for her escape route to be the shaft, because she has something there to facilitate her escape, and she only needs to buy time until the Black Shark gets here to pick her up."

"You think it's coming here?" Nightwing asks.

"If it makes it here. Hopefully, I can keep that from happening. Fisher, can you tell your people to get a fighter airborn?"

"This is Lambert. We've tried that once already. You saw how that turned out. By the way, thanks for saving those pilots."

"What if I were to paint the target for the fighters? They could get their missiles off before coming into range of the chopper's radar, and you're welcome."

"Excellent idea. Make it so. Jets are scrambling as we speak. Thanks again Batman."

"She's on the roof and... she's rigged up a zipline and riding it down to the top of the EnerCorp building. I'm still following her."

EnerCorp abandoned that building when they merged with another energy company based out of Buffalo, so that building is just another abandoned high-rise at the moment, which means no security to speak of, so she could have anything in that building. I'm able to look up from my seat on my bike and I see Dick sliding down the zipline, maybe forty feet behind Talia. As soon as she reaches the roof of the EnerCorp building, she cuts the line, then the roof of the building that they just left from explodes and I have to slam on brakes to keep from driving into a hailstorm of concrete. Nightwing is able to save himself. I trained him well.

"What just happened?" Oracle asks.

"The roof just exploded on the old banker building that Nightwing just chased Talia from." I answer.

"I'm ok. Remember, I've been jumping off of buildings since I was a kid." Dick replies.

"What about Talia?" I inquire.

"No, I think I have her beat on experience in jumping off of buildings... and no, I lost her."

"Batwing is here, I'm going airborn. Nightwing, you take over on the Batcycle."

I lean the Batcycle up against a lamp post, leaving it running, and hit a button on my belt. A cable shoots out of the Batwing, which has just arrived, and I grab it, hooking the cable around my belt. I hit the button again and the cable begins to retract, pulling me up to the Batwing. A trapdoor opens in the bottom, and I enter the craft, holding on to a couple of handles while the trapdoor closes and the cockpit seat slides underneath me. Within seconds, I am strapped in and gaining altitude. My first order of business, of course, is to try to get a visual on Talia. I'm not having much luck.

"I think we've lost her." I call out on the comm. "She had the roof of that building rigged to explode in case anyone was following her when she made her getaway."

"This is Lambert. That's alright, she was second prize anyway. The most important thing right now, is to take out that Black Shark prototype. It's over the water right now, which makes it a perfect time to take it out while no innocents are in danger. Plus, if we take that chopper down, we strand her in Gotham. You'll get her eventually as long as she has no way out. Batman, if your plan works, it's just about our only shot to take that thing down, but it's not going to work if you don't get to it before it gets back over land."

"I'm on it." I reply. It does make some sense. If we eliminate her transportation, we can at least delay her escape from Gotham. She's resourceful, so I doubt that it will completely strand her, but we've got a better chance of getting her to talk if she has to stay a few more days.

"Oracle, are there any subway or sewer access points from the EnerCorp building?" I ask. I want to make sure Talia can't give my backup the slip while I'm painting a bullseye on the Black Shark. She's crafty, and she has quite a few tricks up her sleeve.

"Yes, there was a cargo ramp down from the loading dock to a hold just off of the red tunnel." She replies. "In fact, they used to use the subway tunnels for express shipping of supplies during a power outage. Their CEO figured that they could cut outage time in half by doing so."

"Thanks, Oracle. Nightwing, you stay topside just in case she has another zip line set up or just comes out the front door. Robin, agent Fisher, the two of you can take the storage area."

"Sounds good to me." Says Fisher.

"That was a short drive." Robin attempts to sound dissappointed, but knowing him, he was probably smiling as he said it.

"I'm on my way to help bring down a bird. Oracle, relay the signal from my homing device to Lambert and Grim. Batman out."

I'm almost over the water already as I terminate transmission. This time, unlike my first encounter with the Black Shark prototype, I know exactly where it is, thanks to my homing beacon I had placed on it the other night. Once I begin to get close, about twenty miles out from Boston Harbor, I stay in the cover of the clouds to avoid giving myself away until I have to.

"Batman, this is Colonel Lambert. The jets are in position just outside of radar range from where the beacon signal is coming from. Let us know as soon as you've painted the target and we'll give the go-sign to the pilots to fire missiles at the target." Lambert informs me. "You'll have to keep the laser focused on that Ka-55 until she blows in order to guide the missiles in if they take evasive action."

"Copy that, Colonel. I'm keeping to the cloud cover until they pass underneath me, then I'll drop down and laser the chopper. They are at a half-mile and closing. Have the Coast Guard on standby in case they bail. They should be easy pickings for those guys just floating in the water."

"Already done, Batman. Lambert out."

I see the signal from my beacon getting closer, so I wait, patiently keeping my eye on my tracking readout until it shows that it is even with my current position. I look at my infrared monitor and see my quarry passing below me by about two hundred feet. I drop out of the cloud and swivel around to follow while attempting to get a lock-on with my targeting system. My laser projector has had multiple uses, from picking up minute vibrations on a glass window and translating it into speach for eavesdropping purposes, to finding minute cracks in a wall that could be a sign of a secret door, or even measuring distance to an object. I am using a version of the sight-guided targeting system used by most modern US fighter jets now for air-to-air combat. Wayne Enterprises was one of the companies competing for the contract from the government to install sight-guided targeting systems, but another company won the bid, so the Wayne Enterprises version was never finished. That is, until I decided to install it on the Batwing a few months ago. It's coming in handy already. I just hope the invisibility to radar doesn't keep my laser from working. As soon as I get a lock, I paint the target and call it in to Lambert.

"This is Lambert. I have confirmation that the missiles are away."

"Roger that, Lambert," I reply, "I have the missiles on radar." Of course, if I have the missiles on radar, then so do they. The pilot does the same type of maneuver as last time, firing coutermeasures at the top of a dive. Only problem for them this time is, that the missiles aren't heat seekers. Also, the dive allows me to paint the larger part of the heli since the rotor blades are no longer in my way. At the last second, they see that the dive didn't fool the missiles this time. The occupants bail out into the ocean waves just before the missiles strike home. I wonder if the explosion can be seen from shore. If so, the military will probably call it a training exercise. At any rate, the Black Shark pilot and his accomplices will be easy pickings for the Coast Guard.

"Target destroyed." I confirm. "Occupants should be floating at my current position by the time the Coast Guard gets here. Oracle, relay my exact coordinates to Lambert."

"Already done." She responds.

"Batman!" Nightwing interjects. "There's just been an explosion at the EnerCorp building! Talia is flying a mini-jet out of the side of the building. She evidently had a directional charge to blow the side off of the top few floors, then she just flew out in a small jet. She's heading northwest out of the city."

"Copy that." It was Lambert again. "We've got our eye-in-the-sky on her and tracking her to the northwest, currently at Mach-point-five."

"I'm on my way." I reply. "I may not be able to catch her until she lands, though. She's got a pretty good head start."

"Don't worry about catching her Batman." Grim responded. "We have her with our eye-in-the-sky and will track her until she lands. Then we will relay the coordinates to you through Sam. Go ahead and refuel your bird and catch up."

"Alright. Robin, you were wanting a longer ride? Get back into the Batmobile with agent Fisher and head northwest. All the tanks are full, so you should make Canada before you need to refuel. Nightwing, you can take the Batcycle. I'll catch up. Batman out."

"I copy tha-" Robin was replying, then the signal went dead.

"Robin?" I wonder what happened. "Robin! Oracle? Nightwing? Agent Fisher? Anyone?"

"Your comms aren't EMP shielded are they, Batman?" Grim asked.

"The headsets are, but most of the relays are not."

"We've got multiple power failures reported all over Gotham City." Lambert replied. "Looks like they set the first shell off."

"Right." I replied, thinking. "There was a power plant behind the EnerCorp building. Plant a device there, and Gotham's power grid fails as far out as Bludhaven."

"Well," Grim responds, "looks like the al Ghul's have drawn first blood."


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's note: Thank you to everyone who has read and responded to this story so far. We're getting to the finale, I thought this one might be the last chapter until I began writing it. The next one will definately be the final chapter. I should be posting it in another couple of weeks. Also, just in case you were wondering, I know that there are publications out there that specify exactly which items are in which containers on Batman's utility belt, but I have taken a bit of writer's perogative to treat the utility belt the same way that most men view a lady's pocketbook: ie. There's no telling what will come out of it at any given time. :)**

**Chapter 10**

Robin and I were just coming out of the cargo area to the street-level access when everything went dark. Fortunately, all of my equipment is EMP shielded, or stored inside the osprey, which is also EMP shielded. Looks like most of the equipment for the Bat and his cohorts is EMP shielded as well. No such luck on the comms, though. I guess we'll be dark for a while. I climb into the Batmobile with the kid and we take off. Robin tinkers with the display system for a few seconds and gives me a GPS screen displaying the quickest route out of the city to the northwest. I quickly check the rearview and see the one called Nightwing on the motorbike. Assuming that the shell device was set off in that building that Talia flew the jet out of, we should be in the clear before we even get out of town. We'll cross Gotham Bridge, which should be about the half-way point. The main problem being that we aren't travelling the way the crow flies, so it's going to be a little while before we get there. Hopefully, the electronics in this thing doesn't run out of juice before we leave the shell. At a five-mile radius, zig-zagging through these city streets, it's probably going to take us almost twice as much driving to reach the edge of the shell. I'm half tempted to just run a straight shot past the bridge to make the edge of town before we make the turn northwest. According to the GPS, however, there are many high-traffic areas that we need to avoid going that way, so I'll stick to the route that the GPS is giving me.

As we finally make the edge of the shell, I see a message pop up on the console screen, momentarily taking away the GPS.

_-Robin, press the red SAT button on the console.-_

Robin presses the button instructed. Within seconds, the GPS display is back and we are greeted with voice communication from Oracle.

"Hi, guys! I have Talia's jet on Satellite tracking. Got a good enough view of it from one of the spy satellites to give you some info on it. The type of jet she made her getaway in is called a HAL Ajeet. It's a single seat version of the UK's Folland Gnat used by India and Finland. Sam, give me a few minutes to dial up the correct frequency and I'll have your HQ patched back in."

"Don't worry, they're listening to you now." I inform her (the equipment she was using to disguise her voice earlier must have been fried by the EMP.) "Any clue where she's headed?"

"My guess is somewhere on the Canadian side of Lake Eerie. There were multiple shipments in the logs taken from SemaCorp going to Buffalo that could be easily sent across the lake to wherever Ra's is hiding out. Knowing him, he's not going to be holed up in any major population center, and the Canadian countryside is just remote and secluded enough to suit his needs."

"That makes sense." Canada tends to restrict it's people from living in the countryside, so the rural areas stay relatively untouched by humanity. If Ra's was able to set up there, he could do just about anything, as long as it didn't draw attention to his location, and stay out of sight.

"I also, just before the shell went off, cracked the code for SemaCorp's shipments of the EMP shell devices. It seems that they were listing exactly one laptop shipment to almost every major city on the east coast."

"So they only had enough for the coast?" Robin asks.

"Technically," she responds, "every major city in all of the states on the Atlantic coast, plus all of the major cities in states bordering the gulf and the great lakes as far west as Chicago and New Orleans. I just sent Lambert a list of those cities as you guys were getting the Batmobile's satellite link up."

Good thing Grim gave Sarah a route home avoiding all of those areas.

"Sam, all of the shell devices are being set off now." Lambert breaks in. "We're receiving reports of power grid failures all over the eastern US." I pass on the info to Robin and Oracle.

"Thanks for the update, Sam." Oracle responds. "Batman supplied me with an EMP-shielded backup generator and also EMP-shielded all of my servers soon after 9/11, but my satellite uplink isn't quite as fast as my usual connection. Ah, now I'm seeing it. An exact match of the list of cities that I sent your people."

"Coincidence?" Robin pipes in. "I think not!"

"Glad to have you guys back online." It's Batman. "I'm en route to Buffalo. I have a base along the way where I can refuel. I've been in voice contact with Third Echelon this whole time and their tracking data supports your theory, Oracle. I'll probably beat you guys there."

"Yes, I've linked in to their spy satellite and can see the jet staying its course." Oracle informs us. "Talia has a huge head start on all of you, so she's probably going to get there before anyone else."

"Lambert, can you ask the Japanese to get their Intelligence operatives to help us locate and disable the shell devices?" I ask.

"Already done, Sam." Grim replies. Oracle has fixed the link so that everyone is hearing everyone else.

"I've got Huntress getting the one in Gotham." Oracle says. "Black Canary is already in Philly, so she'll get that one. I'm trying to get ahold of anyone else I can spare."

There is a course change on the GPS showing a new destination with a Buffalo address. "I've just sent rendezvous coordinates to the Batmobile's GPS." Batman says. "Meet me there as soon as you can."

"Entering the highway now." I reply. After a good half an hour of showing complete disregard for any traffic laws, we arrive at our destination.

"Agent Fisher," Batman asks as soon as we pull up to the lakefront overlook that he had set up as our rendezvous point, "have you ever done any hang-gliding or para-sailing?"

"Hang-gliding, yes, para-sailing, no." I reply.

"Robin, get both glider-packs out of the Batmobile. Nightwing, you'll take the other one while Robin goes skiing."

Robin hands me something that looks like a backpack with an oversized carrying handle and a pull cord. I've seen these before. The military was testing them a few years back, but they decided that it would be cost prohibitive. The contraptions were expensive to start with, plus the fact that they would need to train their men to fly them. On top of that, the gliders didn't add enough maneuverability in the military's mind to make up for the fact that you can't fire a weapon while gliding like you can in a parachute. I see Nightwing go ahead and pull his cord, so I do the same. The glider wings deploy and, no suprise, they look like the wings of a bat. A small chain is hooked to each of our gliders at three different points to add stability. Two different tow cables are deployed from Batman's aircraft to attach to the chains on our gilders. There was already a rope tied to some type of hitch on the aircraft, the Batwing, I assume to pull the kid on the waterskis. We all walked to the edge of the lookout as the Batman got back in to the Batwing.

"Hold on tight everybody!" Robin warned moments before we were pulled off of the lookout ledge and over the waters of Lake Eerie. The pull rope for Robin was tied off around his staff, which is a kind of retractable kenpo staff. As we were pulled off of the ledge, Nightwing dropped below us and caught Robin's staff with the back of his knees, easing the kid down toward the water. Soon, we were on our way to where Grim witnessed the HAL Ajeet landing on a hidden airfield just accross the lake from our current position.

I switch the sensors on the Batwing to infrared. Hopefully, that will reveal an entryway into Ra's lair. The IR reveals human shapes scattered along the hillside within the trees. Ra's' desciples from the League of Assasins, no doubt. It also reveals a couple of vent shafts scattered around the area. We're going to have to fight our way in, and I doubt we get there without Ra's or Talia noticing. I go ahead and call it out to everyone. "Infrared shows multiple signatures waiting for us back in the trees."

"Brotherhood of Assassins?" Robin asks.

"I just clicked on my infrared. I got 'em." Fisher responds. "Brotherhood of Assassins? I remember a passing mention of that, as well as 'League of Assassins' in his dossier. Is that similar to his 'Society of the Lotus' in any way?"

"Two names for the same headache." Nightwing interjects before anyone else can drag the words out of their mouths.

"So it's just like a company that goes bankrupt, and closes down the building." Sam gets the hint. "But then a week later, a business with a different name moves in, employing all of the same workers, making the same product, and selling to the same suppliers. The name change is just a distraction."

"Exactly." I reply. "Robin, Nightwing, the two of you don't have the benefit of IR goggles, so stay with the batwing until we say it's safe."

"I've got a better idea." Nightwing says. "The Batwing has IR, that's what you're using now. I'll go in the air and see if I can't gloop some of the bogeys."

"I'll be the spotter/gunner!" Robin exclaims.

"I've got plenty of fuel left, so have at it." I say agreeably.

I release the tow cables as we near the other shore and set the Batwing down on the shoreline and disembark. Robin and Nightwing climb in moments later and take off back into the air after the gliders are folded back up and stored away. Fisher and I begin to walk toward the treeline, which is not that far at all from the shore, using our separate infrared devices to keep an eye on the ambush that we know is waiting for us. We step into a copse of maples, and none of the hidden assassins seem to be making a move.

"Are they not going to attack?" Asks Fisher.

"They're letting us get further in." I reply. "They don't want us to have an escape route. They've got something planned."

We get another couple of steps in before we hear the snapping of a twig, then I feel a sting in my neck and the lights begin to go out. Clever cover, snappeing a twig to cover the sound of blowgun fire.

When I come around, I find that the problem of finding a way in has been taken care of for us. We're both tied up on the exhaust end of the HAL Ajeet that Talia used to get here. I think I see where this is going.

"At last you come to me, my beloved." Talia coos seductively.

"Be-hunh?" The look on agent Fisher's face is priceless. If we weren't in such dire straights, I'd be laughing histerically right now.

"So you have finally come, detective." Ra's says. "I knew you would find me. It was only possible for me to stay hidden from the 'World's Greatest Detective' for so long before our paths inevitably crossed yet again. I'm afraid that this time, however, I must force you to choose between my daughter and your destiny, or your childishly lofty ideals."

"I'll never join you, Ra's." I spit back at him as I activate the hidden cutter in the fingertip of one of my gloves. "I won't take a life, much less an innocent one! What you ask of me is to condone genocide!"

"Think of us together as one, beloved." Talia pleads. "After the apocolypse, we will be worshipped as gods!"

"I don't want to be worshipped, Talia. I want to protect innocent, law-abiding, God-fearing people from demons like your father!" That hurt her, and I knew it would. You can see it on her face. I just need to buy a few more seconds to get these ropes off from around my wrists. "Talia, you don't have to be like him. You're better than he is. Come with me and be rid of his madness!"

"Enough! I will not have you insult my father like that! I will kill you right now if you continue this blasphemy!"

"You won't kill me, Talia. You're not like him. You have the ability to love, your father only has the capacity to hate."

"NO!" Talia screams as she covers her face and runs out of the room, sobbing. I take that as my cue to grab a batarang with my, now free, hands and cut agent Fisher free as well as freeing my own feet. I pull Fisher along with me as we roll out of the way of the jet engines that are beginning to fire up. Fisher runs over to the engine intake and throws something in... OH SHIT! Time to duck. We are both able to take cover just in time as Fisher's frag grenade goes off, disabling the right side of the jet and sending debris flying all over the room. No getting away this time for Ra's. He struggles to get out of the cockpit and I am able to notice that the frag blast didn't skip him. The Ajeet is the world's smallet jet aircraft, so he's lucky to still be alive after a grenade exploding so close to him.

"We should have communication inside the compound now." Nightwing says over the comms. "Can you hear us in there Batman? Agent Fisher, come in?"

"Loud and clear, kid." Fisher says in response. "We've got the aircraft disabled, and Ra's al Ghul hobbled. Grim, let the authorities know that we're capturing a perp on Canadian soil."

"Already done, Sam. There are patrol boats from both the Canadian and US Coast Guard ready just off-shore of your position. He got Toronto's power grid, so the Canadians have a beef with him too. Fortunately, the Coast Guard dock was just outside of the EMP's range."

Fisher fires a couple of shots with his Five-seveN. One into each knee, and one into each shoulder of Ra's al Ghul. "I'm not going to kill you, and I'm not going to let you commit sepoku." He says to Ra's. "Your coming with us!"

Just then, the room begins to fill up with his assassins. I throw down a smoke pellet and begin to fight my way through them. I hear the distinctive hiss of a military-grade smoke grenade, so Fisher is doing the same. I've had years of training in just about every martial arts discipline on the planet, and mastered each. I just hope he can hold up his end of the bargain. I use my IR visor to find my targets, and Fisher has his IR goggles, so he should be fine. The main thing that I'm worried about right now, though, is Talia. She's likely to have sent the assassins in here to create a distraction to occupy us while she rescues her father. Knowing Ra's, he doesn't set up his base of operations to far away from one of his Lazarus Pits. He could let Talia take his life just before she dumps him into the pool. Hopefully, we're able to get to them first.

"Batman!" I hear Fisher call to me. "He's gone!"

I begin making my way over to where I hear his voice coming from. Whenever I grab an assassin, I throw them in the direction that I know the jet to be. That way, I can use the sound of the cluck or thud to gage the distance, since the jet isn't registering on my IR completely.

I jerk an oncoming assassin into the jet face first as I duck underneath it and raise up on the other side. I get to where Fisher is standing just as I am stepping out of the smoke, so I click my IR visor back up into offline mode.

"Easy enough, we can just follow the blood trail right to them." I say.

"Well, four bullet wounds plus frag damage will do that to a body." Sam says as we take off in the direction of the blood trail.

We follow the trail of blood down a corridor and into a naturally-formed cave. I begin to see the tell-tale glow reflecting off of the cave walls as we near the turn that has our cave passageway open up into a large cavern. Just then, a loud shout, which changes to a meniacally screaming laugh comes to our ears and, as we round the corner, we are greeted with the sight of a fully healed Ra's al Ghul, maddened beyond reason by the effects of the pool, climbing out to stand again on the solid ground. This is exactly what I DIDN'T want to happen.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: **_Thank you to all who have read this story. I have had a lot of fun writing it. Also, a special thank you to those of you who have favorited or reviewed this story. It's your kind words that keep us "starving artists" going, and it's your critiques that keep us in line. If you like this, take a look at the other stories I have posted on here. I am currently tossing around some other ideas of things to write, so check my profile page periodically to see if there is anything new._

_And now... the final chapter._

**Chapter 11**

The sight that I see before me can't possibly be real. After taking frag damage from my grenade and four, dammit, FOUR bullets from my Five-seveN, I see this madman standing (stark naked) less than fifty feet from me looking at least ten years younger and without a scratch on him.

"A word of caution, Fisher." Batman says ominously. "The pool has driven him to an extreme madness. His adrenaline level is spiking, so right now, he's stronger than an olympic gold-medal weightlifter."

"So how long is he going to be Hurcules?" I ask.

"No more than half an hour. Maybe less."

Just then our conversation is cut short when Ra's spotted us. Quickly, we moved out of the cramped passageway and into the more spacious cavern.

"DETECTIVE..." al Ghul bellows at the top of his lungs. "AGENT... COME TO DIE! HA HA HA HA!"

"No, father!" Talia screams. "Don't hurt my beloved!" I'll have to ask bats about the details of the pre-nup later.

He begins to charge us. Just as I drop my smoke grenade, I see a puff of smoke come at me from the side. I guess we both had the same idea. The Bat dives to the left, and I dive to my right, leaving the middle open for the enraged maniac to charge through. I flip my trident goggles down and power up the IR as he crashes into the wall of the cavern. With his adrenaline going ape-shit, keeping him blind will be the best way to even the score. The only real problem with IR is that it's hard to tell whether someone is facing toward you or away from you. Basically, you have to pick up on subtle clues, such as where the fingers are, or which way the arms or legs are bent. It takes me a few seconds to locate the tell-tale sign: I follow the movement of his feet as he takes a quarter turn away from me. I slide to my left and come in at the side of his right knee, kicking him in such a way as to disable a normal man. It's like kicking a metal pole. All that adrenaline coursing through him is making his muscles tense to the point that it's going to be difficult to take him down hand-to-hand.

OK, time to adjust my strategy. I pull a shock grenade out of a zipper pocket in my stealth suit and activate it just as I see al Ghul connect with a backhand with Batman, launching him into a stalagmite. Well, it's probably better that the Bat isn't too close for this. I toss the shock grenade at Ra's feet and it works perfectly, almost. I've heard stories of people on drugs like PCP being able to withstand being tazed. I'm seeing the same effect here. He's so far gone mentally right now that he may not have even felt that. It would have totally incapacitated any normal man. Now for plan C... as soon as I can think of a plan C.

I'm dazed for a moment after slamming up against the stalagmite. Luckily there is a bit of padding built into my bat-suit, so I don't have to take the full brunt of the blow. As I shake my head to clear the cobwebs, I hear the sound of a shock grenade going off. I can also see the arcing webs of white-hot electricity going off around him through my IR visor. I've tried that trick before too. It's not going to work until Ra's calms down a bit. The only thing that might work, other than just staying out of his way and letting the madness wear off, is to use the line on my grapnel. Maybe I can go for the legs and tie him up, but that means getting close. Of all of the different styles of martial arts that I have mastered, Aikido seems to be the one that will work best in this situation. Aikido emphasizes defense, and redirecting an attacker's momentum to use his momentum against him. So I shift into my Aikido training to weave my way through al Ghul's erratic movements. A dodge...a duck...another dodge, and then a roll and I'm right where I want to be. I unhook my grapnel from my belt and feed enough of the high-grade carbon fiber mesh rope into my hand to do the deed. I wrap the rope around his legs and make a knot to hold it all together... I hope. He tries to take a step and begins to lose his balance. I help that along by quickly jumping to my feet and pulling up with all of my strength, sending him to the hard stone floor of this cavern. He puts his arms out to catch himself, and I let go to move around to his side. As he starts to rise, I give Ra's a kick, with all of my strength, to his midsection and cartwheel out of the way before he can react and do any damage. I land a little shakily because my foot is now a bit numb from the kick. Man, what I wouldn't give for Azrael's metal gauntlets right now. I send another powerful front kick, with the other foot, to al Ghul's face. I think I've broken his nose, but it's hard to tell through the IR. The area is still filled with smoke, and will be for quite a while. Even if I did break his nose, he probably doesn't even feel it right now. Suddenly, I hear a shot from Fisher's Five-seveN, and a scream from Ra's. Finally, something that hurts him. I hear a scream from Talia. I turn my head and see her running this way, time to head her off.

There, Batman did me a favor by roping al Ghul's legs together. I took my time to get the perfect shot and, I believe, got him through both ankles. Now for my next trick. I stuck a deversion camera on the stalagmite that I was leaned up against. The diversion camera is a neat little tool, sending video to my opsat screen as well as containing a few interesting gimmicks. I move around behind the stalagmite and use one of the buttons on my opsat to set off one of the pre-programmed, selectable noises: a recording of myself saying "Here, kitty kitty." I usually use that one duping drug addicts. He attempts to get to his feet, but his ankles won't hold him anymore, so he falls back down. In a moment of perfect good fortune, he uses the stalagmite that the cam is on to support himself to try to get back up. Another feature of my diversion cameras is the one-shot use CS gas. I hit another button on my opsat and Ra's gets a blast of tranq gas right in the sniffer. Now to pray that he got a big enough whiff of the gas to knock him out. I hear Talia screaming and see Batman across the way scuffling with her. Then I look back at her father to see him groggily crawling about. I run around to his feet and grab the cable that bats used to trip him up initially. I then jump on al Ghul's back and use the cable on his grapnel as a garrote. Maybe I can help the CS gas along by restricting the flow of oxygen to his enraged brain. After only a few seconds, it begins to work. Before long, he's out cold. I check his breathing, he's still alive, now to work on the Batman's woman.

"He's not dead, Talia." I assure her. "That shot went through his ankles. I saw the reaction of the feet to the bullet. He'll be fine, we're just trying to get him calm."

"Oh, but my beloved, you must join us." Talia pleads. "The world will end, one way or another. Why not facilitate the fall so that we can control the outcome. If this world is left to its own devices, the fall may be so much more perilous, if not as soon."

Talia was only a girl of thirteen when I first foiled one of her father's plots. She has been a love-struck teeny-bopper ever since. Even now, ten years later, she is fixated on me. Her father likes the idea of recruiting me into his army, due to his admiration of my abilities and respect for my intellect. Our polar-opposite worldviews, however, put us on opposing sides each time we meet, meaning that Talia is repeatedly caught between her biggest crush and her loyalty to her father.

"You know I prefer the free will of humanity as a whole over mass genocide." I spray her with a shot of knockout gas that I palmed from my utility belt. "Sleep now."

"Bru-u-u-ce." She breaths as she falls into my arms. I lay her down gently.

"I see you've slipped your date a ruthie." Sam quips as he approaces.

"I admit, she's hot." I reply. "But, I just can't see inviting her folks over for Thanksgiving turkey. The conversation may be a little too stimulating."

"I guess not. Besides, the night life in your own little world has got to be a killer on your relationships."

"You said it." I chuckle as I bend down to tie up Ra's.

A few minutes later, we exit the tunnel and are met by Robin and Nightwing.

"All of the League of Assasins have been subdued," Nightwing says, "and the authorities are coming ashore to take them in."

"Lambert, confirm." Sam asks. "Are those our guys?"

"Yes, those guys are ours." Lambert confirms over the comm.

"It's a good thing that we were able to knock that emitter off that was blocking the comms." Robin said. "Batwing is parked in a small clearing near the northern entrance to this complex."

"Batman, you might want to muzzle your bride-to-be." Fisher advises. "She talks in her sleep. We don't want any secrets slipping out." Robin and Nightwing suddenly had horrified expressions on their faces. "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me. I'm not even supposed to exist. You get full credit for this mission." Robin pulls out a bit of thick tape from his belt to place over her mouth as they emerge from the complex to the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. NSA agents move in to take Talia and Ra's from us while still more move in to the complex to drag out the other League of Assasins members plus anyone from the old Shadows terrorist organization that may have been hiding out in there. They will also look through all of al Ghul's databases to see what else they can find. The Huey drops a string ladder down to us and agent Fisher grabs it with one hand, salutes us with the other and says in a fake Aussie accent, "Later Bruce" as he is pulled away.

As I crawl into the door of the Huey from the ladder, my opsat buzzes at me. I look down at my arm and see that my little angel is calling me from the EMP-safe phone in my basement. I dig the phone out of my osprey while thanking any supernatural being that will listen and answer. "Hi, honey. Safe, I see?"

"Hi daddy." Sarah responds in her sweet voice. "We had to walk the last three miles. The EMP reached past the house."

"I guessed you probably would. There should be a Japanese agent watching you."

"Yes, he knew me by sight and walked with us from where he spotted us right to the door and is making his rounds through the house."

"Good. Now, you need to get into the safe-room that I built. There is power in there. You have food, water, a microwave, a radio, and a TV. There are also two small cots in there."

"Cool, now how do I get in?"

"Look in the bookcase on the wall behind you for 'Passage to Dawn' by R.A. Salvatore. Push that book to the back of the shelf, and the door will open. There is a switch on the inside of the room to close the door back."

"Ok. Thanks, dad. How is everything on your end?"

"We won. Hopefully, I'll be home soon."

"Great! See you then, dad. I love you!"

"Love you too, sweetheart. Goodbye."

"Bye."

I finger the comm as soon as I get the phone back into the osprey. "Lambert, can you have these guys drop me off in Baltimore?"

"What guys, Fisher? You should have gotten on a boat!" Just then, I feel the point of a barrell of a M1911 at my head. Fortunately, my training makes it almost impossible to pull the trigger faster than I can knock the gun wide of the mark. I raise my hands up in mock surrender and begin to turn around. I pick just the right moment to chop downward with my hand, knocking the gun wide so that it goes off harmlessly into the night sky. Before the gunman can blink again, I've hit him four times. I knock the gun from his hand and slip it into my own, firing it into his stomach. I then grab his jacket and toss him out of the chopper. By then, the pilot has noticed the scuffle, so he's coming at me and there is no one at the stick. I pull my Five-seveN and fire both guns, putting one bullet through each eye. I quickly toss him outside as well and sit down in the pilot's seat. I level myself off and stabilize the 'copter first before I strap myself in. Then, I hit the comm again.

"Well, Lambert, I guess I'm taking myself home. By the way, Grim, you should see my new ride."


End file.
